Judy Hoffman is an American artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 living and working in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. Hoffman’s work, which includes installation, sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

, and artist books, explores themes of birth

Birth

Birth is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring. The offspring is brought forth from the mother. The time of human birth is defined as the time at which the fetus comes out of the mother's womb into the world...

, decay

Decomposition

Decomposition is the process by which organic material is broken down into simpler forms of matter. The process is essential for recycling the finite matter that occupies physical space in the biome. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death...

, waste

Waste

Waste is unwanted or useless materials. In biology, waste is any of the many unwanted substances or toxins that are expelled from living organisms, metabolic waste; such as urea, sweat or feces. Litter is waste which has been disposed of improperly...

, and regeneration

Regeneration

-In biology:* Regeneration , the ability to recreate lost or damaged tissues, organs and limbs* Bush regeneration, an ecological technique practiced in Australia-In music:* Regeneration , a 1977 album by Roy Orbison...

. Combining disparate elements of industrial refuse, natural debris and handmade paper, she constructs microcosm

Macrocosm and microcosm

Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek Neo-Platonic schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos, from the largest scale all the way down to the smallest scale...

s, ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

s, and other natural formations.

“Her fascination with making things is evident in the magical way that she combines and constructs disparate elements. Hoffman sees the potential for abject scavenged objects

Found object

A found object, in an artistic sense, indicates the use of an object which has not been designed for an artistic purpose, but which exists for another purpose already. Found objects may exist either as utilitarian, manufactured items, or things which occur in nature...

 to become something else. It’s as if a crumpled piece of wire calls out to her from the sidewalk, ‘I’m lively. Take me. I could be something,’” wrote Jennifer McGregor, curator at Wave Hill

Wave Hill

Wave Hill is an estate and garden in New York.Wave Hill may also refer to:*Kalkaringi, Northern Territory, formerly known as Wave Hill, a township in the Northern Territory of Australia...

 in Bronx, New York.

Hoffman’s environmental installations bring a wildness to manmade spaces. Her site specific installation venues in New York City include Wave Hill, Ceres Gallery, Nutureart, Proteus Gowanus

Proteus Gowanus

Proteus Gowanus is an interdisciplinary gallery and reading room founded in 2005 in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The gallery, which curates year-long theme-based shows, takes its name from shape-shifting Greek sea god Proteus and the nearby Gowanus Canal....

, Kentler International Drawing Center and the Nathan Cummings Foundation

Nathan Cummings Foundation

The Nathan Cummings Foundation was endowed by Nathan Cummings , founder of Consolidated Foods, now called Sara Lee Corporation...

; Rutgers

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

 and Jersey City Universities, New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

; Mary Grove College, Detroit; and the Bienalle Bonn/Frauen Museum and Kunstler Forum in Bonn

Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

Hoffman’s artist books are sculpted from handmade paper. Her Wild Book, Tree and Leaf Text series are improvisations on the structures of plant and animal life. They are included in the special collections at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, Rhode Island School of Design

Rhode Island School of Design

Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...

 and Long Island University

Long Island University

Long Island University is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution of higher education in the U.S. state of New York.-History:...

 libraries, the Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....

, the Alan Chasnanoff Bookworks Collection, and the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry.

Hoffman attended the New York Studio School

New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture

The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture at 8 West 8th Street, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York State is an art school formed in 1963 by a group of students and their teacher, Mercedes Matter, all of whom had become disenchanted with the fragmented...

 and received her B.A. from Grinnell College

Grinnell College

Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, U.S. known for its strong tradition of social activism. It was founded in 1846, when a group of pioneer New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College....

. She is a recipient of grants from the Women’s Studio Workshop and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Ms. Hoffman lives and works in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York.

External links

• http://judyhoffman.info/home.html Official website
• http://wavehill.org/arts/judy_hoffman.html
• http://www.wavehill.org/arts/natureindoorsfortheholidays.html