Judy Onofrio

Judith K. "Judy" Onofrio (born November 21, 1939) is an internationally known artist who lives and works in Rochester, Minnesota, United States.

Contents

• Awards
• Major exhibitions
• References

Born in New London, Connecticut, Onofrio studied business law and economics at Sullins College in Bristol, Virginia. She moved to Rochester, Minnesota with her husband Burton, a neurosurgeon, in 1967. Onofrio became involved with the Rochester community, becoming acting director of the Rochester Art Center in 1970 while raising her family. She founded the children's art program Total Arts Day Camp in 1971 at the Rochester Art Center, a program that continues to operate today. A 1993 profile of Onofrio in the Star Tribune described her as "a force in the Rochester art community as ceramicist, jeweler, sculptor, teacher, guiding light and big personality." The main gallery at the Rochester Art Center is named in her honor.

Involved in many other facets of the Minnesota art community, Onofrio also helped found and acted as president of the Minnesota Crafts Council in 1972, and served on the founding committee of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1975.

According to art critic Tanya Hartman, Onofrio explores the relationship between life and death through clay sculpture and found objects. Known for glittery objects and installations, Onofrio began her artistic work in clay in the early 1970s, working out of a clay studio in the basement of her family home. She was strongly influenced by outdoor art and built armatures on which to layer the collections of miscellaneous beads, glass, and hardware. This work was somewhat autobiographic, but humorously so. By the early 1980s, Onofrio was creating outdoor installations, influenced in part by regional Midwestern attractions such as the Dickeyville Grotto in Wisconsin and Grotto of the Redemption in Iowa. These large-scale outdoor installations led to events such as "fire performances" in at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa in 1984 and Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1985, pieces in which wood-and-paper pyramids laced with gunpowder were set alight. Onofrio's first major exhibition, Judyland, opened at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1993. The exhibition was held over for six additional weeks by popular demand.

She has also worked with wood and in jewelry. Beginning in the late 2000s, her work became less colorful, with a focus on dried bone sculptures. In 2010, her work was exhibited in a collaboration at St. Olaf College with her daughter, photographer Jennifer Onofrio Fornes. Major exhibitions in the 2000s and 2010s include retrospectives at the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Plains Art Museum, and the Arkansas Art Center.