Judy Ledgerwood
Tue, Oct 14 [CHICAGO] — GRAY is pleased to announce the opening of Judy Ledgerwood’s new permanent, site-specific installation at the CTA’s newly renovated Blue Line Racine Station. The Racine stop renovation is part of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)’s multi-year project to make the Blue Line Forest Park Branch fully accessible. Composed of 704 unique, hand-made ceramic tiles, Ledgerwood’s new public artwork, titled Flowers for the Blue Line Racine Station, spans 40 feet of wall space from floor to ceiling, wrapping around the station’s north and west walls to greet commuters as they enter.
Conceived over two years ago, the project was realized in collaboration with Ingrid Harding, Chief of Production at the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory in Munich, Germany—a producer of fine porcelain and terracotta majolica since 1747. Each tile was hand-formed in red terracotta and finished with low-relief textures and vibrant polychrome majolica glazes. Ledgerwood designed sixteen distinct tile forms and spent months refining the clay body and glazes, treating each tile as an individual painting.
Each design features one lobe of a quatrefoil; when arranged in sets of four, the tiles create a full quatrefoil or four-petaled flower. The installation’s spectrum of color and form creates a rhythmic composition in which every tile is unique yet part of a larger, cohesive whole. By mirroring the scale of the white tiles used throughout the station, Ledgerwood’s work seamlessly integrates with its architectural surroundings while infusing the space with color and painterly vitality.
While Ledgerwood is celebrated for her large-scale wall paintings and work in ceramics, this project marks her first permanent ceramic installation of such scale and ambition. For commuters passing through the Racine stop, the repeating yet ever-changing patterns evoke the experience of daily transit itself—familiar and routine, yet subtly transformed by time, season, and the movement of fellow passengers.
ABOUT JUDY LEDGERWOOD
In a painting career spanning four decades, Judy Ledgerwood has confronted and expanded the history of abstract painting by decentering perceptions of its neutrality and prioritizing visual engagement and pleasure. Drawing upon rich and diverse sources from the realms of both fine art and popular culture, Ledgerwood’s optically bold, large-scale canvases engage viewers in active looking and challenge conventional notions of beauty and taste. She explores light, color, and structure with great specificity, and early on in her career, she embraced traditionally feminine colors like pastels, pinks, and fluorescent hues to undermine the male-dominated milieu of abstract painting. Through repetitive circular shapes and her signature quatrefoil pattern, Ledgerwood bends and relaxes the grid, bringing influences from the Pattern & Decoration movement, quilting, and textiles into the arena of her paintings. Ledgerwood’s work includes an exploration of architectural spaces through her creation of monumental wall paintings and environmental installations, which have been exhibited at The Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among other venues.
Judy Ledgerwood (b. 1959, Brazil, Indiana) received a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has held solo exhibitions at numerous venues, including the Graham Foundation, the Smart Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and The Renaissance Society in Chicago; Häusler Contemporary in Zurich, Switzerland, Munich, Germany and Lustenau, Austria; and Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the David Owsley Museum of Art, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana; the University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, Kentucky; and Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY. She has received awards
from the Driehaus Foundation, Artadia, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Illinois Art Council. Ledgerwood is professor emeritus at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she served as Chair of the Department of Art Theory and Practice. She lives and works between Chicago and Sawyer, Michigan.
ABOUT CTA PUBLIC ART
Over the last several years, Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) collection of public art has undergone its largest expansion ever–doubling in size and featuring more than 80 works of art and significant architectural details across the system, including mosaics, sculptures, and paintings. Judy Ledgerwood joins previous artists commissioned to create artworks for stations, including Theaster Gates (Red Line station at 95th Street in 2018) and Nick Cave (Green Line Garfield station in 2018).
The CTA believes public transit is more than just a means to and from work or school, it’s also an opportunity to learn and inspire with each trip taken. The investments CTA has made in public art and architecture are a reflection of how much we value served communities by providing a friendlier, more inviting atmosphere, while also offering a glimpse into the rich history and unique characteristics of the surrounding neighborhoods.
