About the exhibition:

Four artists who are concerned about the ecological future of our country and planet have created Our House is on Fire, an exhibition focusing on current ecological crises. Judith Brodsky, Linda Dubin Garfield, Pamela Tudor, and Elsa Wachs create works that inspire discussion and concern about preserving the health and safety of our planet.

Artists are often inspired by nature and create art out of the outstanding natural beauty all around us. We are now at a critical juncture where we need to advocate for harnessing our imagination, wealth, and technology to make our communities and our country greener and healthier places to live for everyone. Recently the Supreme Court curtailed the powers of the EPA to protect the environment, no longer requiring the reductions in emissions that are urgently needed to limit global warming. What are we to do? We need clean air, clean water, clean energy, open spaces and a livable climate for ourselves and future generations. Judith Brodsky, Linda Dubin Garfield, Pamela Tudor, and Elsa Wachs interpret these catastrophic times and present works in their own visual language that strive to create an appreciation for natural beauty and a concern for its preservation.

Our House is on Fire by Linda Dubin Garfield, Judith Brodsky, Pamela Tudor, and Elsa Wachs will be on view in Gallery 1 at Da Vinci Art Alliance starting May 3rd until May 21st. The opening reception will take place on Thursday May 4th, 4-7pm.

About the artists:

Judith K. Brodsky is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Visual Arts, Rutgers University. She is the founder of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, now the Brodsky Center at Pennsylvania Academy of fine Arts. She is also the co-founder with Ferris Olin of the Rutgers Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, and The Feminist Art Project. As a curator she has organized many exhibitions including the Philadelphia city-wide print festival Philagrafika and co-curated The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art, and Society with Ferris Olin. She is a past president of the board of the College Art Association, the Women's Caucus for Art, ArtTable, and former board chair, New York Foundation for the Arts, former dean and associate provost at Rutgers. She is a printmaker/artist with work in many collections. Brodsky writes on women artists and printmaking. Her new book just published by Bloomsbury Academic is Dismantling the Patriarchy Bit by Bit, the first history of feminist artists using digital technology. Her current project is Retrieving the Life and Art of James Wilson Edward and a Circle of Black Artists: Rex Goreleigh, Hughie Lee-Smith, Selma Hortense Burke, and Wendell T. Brooks, an exhibition restoring a group of Black artists to art history. 

Linda Dubin Garfield, an award-winning printmaker and mixed media artist, creates visual memoirs exploring the mystery of memory and the magic of place, using hand-pulled printmaking techniques, photography, collage and digital imaging. Her abstract and dynamic works use multiple layers of ink that waver between background and foreground creating a fusion of surface design and abstract expressionism She also creates installations that include public participatory art, especially when she is exploring themes relating to women in today’s culture. In 2005 she founded ARTsisters, a group of professional artists who empower each other and their community through art. In 2007 she started smART business consulting, helping emerging artists reach their goals and their audience, providing consulting and coaching on the business side of art through individual, small groups, and workshop experiences as well as providing opportunities to exhibit work. Today she serves on several non-profit boards, and appreciates her good fortune to be able to make art every chance she gets.

Pamela Tudor is a painter and maker of shadow boxes and palm bark sculptures. Her expressive paintings focus on concerns about the destruction and beauty of our home planet. Pamela’s shadow boxes transform found and broken objects into something altogether new. Pamela has an M.A. in Psychology from New York University. She went to art school in NY for four years. Pamela has shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Fairmount Waterworks, the Marriott /Philadelphia Navy Yard, the Noyes Museum, and the El Paso Museum of Art. Her work is in private collections in NY, NJ, Philadelphia, Miami, and Los Angeles.

Elsa Wachs’ art journey began as a painter. The Feminist Movement propelled her to start a successful, decades long, art-business career. Her artistic horizons widened, producing a broad range of expressions reflecting her passion for life, including timely issues, social and political concerns. Her early entrance into the digital world gave her another avenue to express her artwork adding to her expansive palette of mixed-media. Elsa’s award-winning artwork is being used and shown in institutions and private collections internationally and has been taken into space on NASA’s Space Shuttle Mission Discovery. Her work is featured in numerous books, magazines and newspaper articles; she had been a Judaic consultant/designer to the giftware industry such as Lenox China and Gorham Silver. Elsa’s innovative artworks continue to be echoed by professional and folk artists world wide.