Alumni Highlight...

Judy Rushin creates work that is conceptually driven by physical spaces and impermanent architecture. Her paintings and constructions describe the landscape of hidden places, exploring concepts of sanctuary, and shelter. Rushin earned her MFA in Visual Arts at GSU in 2005 and currently teaches at Florida State University. 

Recent exhibitions include group and solo shows in New York, Korea, Chicago, New Orleans, and Miami. She examines the physicality of architecturally defined spaces through drawings and paintings that often incorporate built structures. Rushin has been included twice in New American Paintings. Along with a national exhibition record, she is the recipient of numerous grants, awards and residencies.  

Statement (excerpt):

Sitting in my rabbit hutch I think about being invisible.  I like it here, sheltered by the decking of a play structure above and on all sides with deer screen and 4x4s. It’s shady but not too shady, sunny but not too sunny, snug but not claustrophobic. I have an old metal chair in here, the kind that rocks a little because it has legs in front that curve under to the floor. No one ever thinks to look for me here. 

(I spent half my life whining about how I was invisible, but I’ve come to appreciate its practicalities, even its significance. The significance of insignificance.) ...

This is how I like to think of my paintings -- not as privileged objects “hanging on the wall over there,” but as walls we use to define our space – utilitarian and enveloping while maintaining the emotional and even representational role historically associated with painting.  More specifically, I build temporary structures that act as events more than places – a fort, a box to hold a small animal, a shelter – that act as short-lived architectures that represent momentary needs not fulfilled within the structure of an established system, ephemeral and ultimately unsustainable...