Judy S. Gelles (July 31, 1944 – March 14, 2020) was a multimedia American artist who explored the interplaybetween art, sociology, and psychology using image and text.
Her photography is known for documenting family and domestic life, especially her own, with an ongoing witty and frank reckoning with traditional roles for women as daughter, wife, and mother.
She moved beyond her own family as subject, culminating in the decade-long Fourth Grade Project, a portrait study of the lives of 300 children from around the world.
"[4] The series includes portraits of her breastfeeding, being on the toilet with children hovering by, and on the floor watching television, noting she had three one-and-a-half periods a week "to do something creative.
"I was the member of a women's consciousness-raising group in the '70s and I had to decide whether I would further my career as an artist or stay as a guidance counselor and make money," she said.
"[6] She then attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where she expanded her photographic and video craft and completed her MFA in 1991.
In 1998, Judy and Richard moved to Philadelphia, where she found expanded opportunities to display her work and extend the scope of her projects.
During a trip to Australia, she photographed private family sheds on Brighton Beach as reflecting both the individuality and conformity of each.
[11] During a 1905 residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL, Gelles created the video of "Artists on Age,"[12] which is unique for its revealing only the moving of the speakers' lips.
For example, in a one day residency at Love Park in Philadelphia on October 10, 2009, Gelles and Linda Brenner asked 100 people to create a fingerprint and answer the four questions.
The results were printed up and displayed as part of a sculpture called "Glass House" in Philadelphia, as well as at the Pentimenti Gallery, her longtime exhibitor.
[14] The material developed into a curriculum project free for users under the aegis of CultureTrust Greater Philadelphia, and has an Exhibits USA touring nationally from 2020 to 2025.
[18] The arc of Gelles's career, from personal to community, from solitary to cooperative, reveals her continued exploration of art for social purpose and personal inquiry.. As Ann Landi reflected, "Gelles has been around long enough to have lived through the many changes that have affected the lives of women, but she approaches her subjects with warmth, humor, and consummate skill.
"[19] Of her projects involving architectural structures, one gallery observed such "works take a similar taxonomic approach to understanding the politics of space, raising questions about the manner in which our quarters define, connect, and divide us.