Moonelis | The Marks Project

About

Biography

Judy Moonelis hascreated several bodies of sculptural work each related to a human characteristic including memory, listening, touch, and breath. The work is created usinga number of clay forming techniques including hand-building, wheel-throwing, slabs, and pinching.

Moonelis is one of a small group of east coast ceramic sculptors, including Judy Fox and Sergei Isupov, who focus on the figure and a larger national group of established sculptors that includes Viola Frey, Robert Arneson, Mary Frank, Stephen DeStaebler, Jack Earl, and Robert Brady. Moonilis draws inspiration from medical and anatomical images. Many of her early sculptures are one-sided slabs with a definite front and back, both surfaces fully articulated and finished with different themes. This allowed her to express more than one thought in a piece. Gradually she began to make pieces to be seen in the round. Moonelis has always been fascinated with the human body and has used it repeatedly to express her ideas. By 2014 she was creating large installations that grew out of her research about the inside of the body and how it relates to the outside.

In 1991 she was awarded the First Place Prize from the Virginia A. Groot Foundation competition.

Apprenticeships & Residencies

Primary Work Experience

1978—

Studio artist

Rockford College, Rockford, Illinois

Greenwich House, New York, New York

1984

1987

Instructor, The New School, Parsons School of Design, New York, New York

Fairleigh Dickenson University, Teaneck, New Jersey

Other

Public Collections

Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona

Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Arkansas

Cranbrook Museum of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York

Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia

The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina

Museum of Art, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin

Rockford College Art Gallery, Rockford, Illinois

Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Arts, Alfred University, Alfred, New York

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC

Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Malibu, California

Bibliography

Brown, Glen. “Engaging Science: Generating a Genre.” Ceramics Art and Perception, no. 65 (2006).

Clark, Garth. American Ceramics: 1876 to the Present, revised edition. New York, NY: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1987.

Clowes, Judy and Bruce Pepich. The Nude, Judy Moonelis. Chicago, IL: Perimeter Gallery, 1995.

DelVecchio, Mark. Post Modern Ceramics, New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 2001.

Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York

Kopp, Linda. The Best 500 Ceramics. New York, NY: Lark Crafts/Sterling Publishing, 2012.

Levin, Elaine. The History of American Ceramics: from Pipkins and Bean Pots to Contemporary Forms, 1607 to the Present. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 1988.

McFadden, David and Ursula Neuman. Corporal Identity. : 9^th Triennial. New York, NY: Museum of Arts and Design, 2003.

Nos, Gnosis. “Crossing the Boundaries of intimacy” American Ceramics 5, no. 2 (1986): 18-27.

Perry, Barbara. American Ceramics: The Collection of the Everson Museum of Art. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publishers, 1989.

Stein, Judith. “Judy Moonelis.” American Ceramics 1 (Summer 1982): 60-61.

Winter, David. “Judy Moonelis.” Artnews 85 (January 1986): 111.

CV or Resume

Website(s)