A Conversation with Artist-Writer Judy Herman By Artist and Contributor Lynne LaFleur
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Palos Verdes artist and writer Judy Herman at her studio at Los Angeles Harbor Arts in San Pedro. A versatile artist working with an array of mixed media elements, collage, paint, and photograph, Judy is also a writer with an extensive history as a reference librarian at the Central library in downtown Los Angeles, near where she grew up in Monterey Park.
Judy began our chat with a bit of her beginnings as an artist –
“I started drawing and painting at the Pasadena Art Museum when I was nine years old; and I had a wonderful teacher there. She laid out on a long table all fashion of unusual things, baskets, cloth, random objects. We had to pick a viewpoint and frame our drawing within our chosen space. She didn’t teach us how to draw, but to see! We learned to create composition.
This freed me up and became my art trajectory. It made me appreciate that I could look at anything and find art. I like landscapes but also abstraction and collage, using any media, fabric, and gels with a desktop printer; it’s fun just playing around with it.
One day a raven came along and shredded our window screens including the one on our patio door not for nesting material; it left all the shreds and only fringed the door screen. I thought I’d start painting on it not knowing how difficult that was going to be! But I love experimenting, seeing what’s going to happen – that’s really what’s good about collage, you can mix it around until you get what you want.
I studied at UCLA but didn’t go to art school. I did take classes at Palos Verdes Art Center and continuing workshops where everybody does their own thing. Frank Minuto was instrumental in me getting into abstraction, “You gotta go big,” he told me.
From physical collage, I went into digital art and photography. Where before, photography was just for documenting my travels, with digital I can layer things, move them around and change the colors; and if I don’t like it, hit Command Z and start over!
I love layering things, it adds to the mystery. I like people to look a little longer and puzzle over what’s happening. Sometimes I just throw things together and have the viewer make up their own story and what it means to them. Sometimes I know what I want and sometimes I don’t. There’s so much there; that’s what I like, for people to discover it.
I traveled to Costa Rica a year and a half ago and I loved it. I took a lot of photographs to use in my work when I got back to the studio. My work was exhibited in 15 art shows in 2024. I’m thrilled to be exhibiting at the FotoNostrom Gallery in Barcelona, Spain. They show renown photographers like Lee Miller, Steve McCurry and Robert Doisneau and also have international competitions to discover emerging artists. I was in two of their shows last year and I’ll be in another in late April.
As a writer, I like to write about art and language. I’ve written for the LA Times, LA Weekly, for Slate and AfterImage (a journal published by U.C. Press) about photography, and on various subjects in Westways, Mental Floss, and for the Sierra Club.”
Judy Herman, writer/artist
hyyp://www.facebook.com/Judith.B.Herman
IG: judyherman.art
Lynne LaFleur attended Malaga Cove School, Lunada Bay Elementary, and Chadwick School, received her BFA from Pratt Art Institute in Brooklyn and has lived in New York City, Colorado and Northern California before returning to Palos Verdes in the late 1980s.
For more information, please contact Lynne at “lynnelf1@gmail.com”- The Centennial Celebration poster and all the individual illustrations (both as fine art giclée prints and as educational posters) are available for purchase from her website: www.lynnelafleur.com Facebook: LynneLaFleurArtist Instagram: “lynnelf1”
