The exhibition includes approximately fifty small paintings (ranging in size of 6 x 6 inches to 10 x 10 inches), six folded large drawings on paper and two gridded collages. In the small paintings, Glantzman sources images from Homer’s painting as well as from portraits by Jacques-Louis David or stock photos of TV personalities such as Columbo (TV detective), or simply head shots of people on the street. She paints the same portrait repeatedly, finding that each painting revealed a new personality. She refers to these small canvases as “the actors” as they take on her voice. The six folded drawings are done over several months, each drawing a square portion of the whole, often worked on while she commuted to her teaching job. She paints or draws every image that captures her eye, layering images upon images, month after month, resulting in a visual record of time. She refers to these folded drawings as “the calendar.” The two larger collages are, for Glantzman, “the Grand Stage.” In these, she pulls from the small paintings and the images from folded drawings as if all were her vocabulary, joining together to complete the opera.

Judy Glantzman graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978. She began exhibiting in the early 1980’s in the East Village art scene, at Civilian Warfare and Gracie Mansion. She followed with shows at BlumHelman and Hirschl & Adler Modern in the 1990’s and at Betty Cuningham Gallery for the past decade years. She had a 30 year retrospective at Dactyl Foundation in spring 2009.

The artist’s work can be seen in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Art Museum, New York, NY; Grey Art Gallery, New York, NY; the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; The Progressive Collection, Cleveland, OH; and the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most notably the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 2001; the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Grant, 1997; the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, 1994; and the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, 1992. Glantzman lives and works in New York, NY.