Judy Chappus: Skin in the Game

Judy Chappus is a Windsor-based artist and poet who is uncompromising in her artistic searching. This survey exhibition, ranging from Chappus’ student years to the present, captures a restless artist in the midst and aftermaths of many reckonings: with motherhood, shifting critical fortunes, aging, and climate change; others, too many to name. Animating all works on view is Chappus’ courage, a vital throughline connecting Chappus’ student work at the University of Windsor and the University of California at Irvine, through her return to Windsor, to the present.

Chappus’ expansive, multimedia works reflect the artist’s Catholic upbringing, her exposure to feminist performance, and her longstanding interest in figuration and representation. More recently, installations and paintings address ecological issues, bringing together concerns around the Anthropocene and the histories of the places where Chappus lives and works. This includes Salt Spring Island, where Chappus was based for much of the pandemic and where she returns annually, and the Windsor region, where the Chappus family has resided since 1826. Collectively, the exhibition speaks to an artist who is sincerely and ferociously grappling with the issues of her time, with an eye for the outlaw and the courage to face difficult subjects.

Skin in the Game is a tribute to the stakes of Chappus’ work, and the personal risks and vulnerabilities the artist takes and allows in its creation. A retrospective can be an invitation to make history of materials, to revisit old works, and to loom errant threads into a cohesive whole: to spread open the garden, and eat the juicy apples.

About the Artist: Judy Chappus

Judy is a Windsor based artist and uses photography, sculpture, video, painting and writing projects to share her life experiences. She is a founding member of the group, “The Exhibitionists”, and has been working with other woman and artists in the community since 2014 to create and exhibit figurative works with an emphasis on changing destructive cultural beliefs regarding woman, power and identity.

In 2020 she wrote an independent book of poetry titled, Chop Shop, a book of poems about the neighbors. This publication is now part of the rare books collection in The Leddy Library at The University of Windsor.

On Salt Spring Island in 2021-22 she photo-documented and produced drawings, prints and paintings for a poetry and art book searching for a process by which to best share her experience of that bio-eccentric landscape. “Unfolding the Trees” is a series of life size graphite drawings on stretched linen embracing the notion of eco psychology by bathing the viewer in the magnificence, magnitude and bio diverse universe of trees. These works are meant to remedy our ever-fading connection with the natural world. She was one of four artists selected for The 2021 Salt Spring Mural Project and in 2022 she was a self-appointed artist in residence on Salt Spring Island resulting in a solo exhibition at The Salt Spring Gallery and a book of poetry both titled, “Understory”.

“They held a hand over the cave wall and blew pigment around it wanting to connect to something larger than themselves, something beyond space and time, something elemental and eternal.”

Chappus has an Honors BA in Fine Art from the University of Windsor, ON and a Masters Degree from the University of California, Irvine.