judith schaechter process

Schaechter’s imagery is always narrative, but ambiguous, as the artist asks us to bring our own perspective to her stories. Judith Schaechter, quite simply, is an unintentional rebel. Judith Schaechter is renowned for her brilliantly colored stained glass pieces, each created through painstaking multi-layered process of engraving, sandblasting, painting and firing. And I find that sometimes when I have high hopes for things, they tend to be disappointing. “ Child Bride ” (2001) features one of Judith’s many lone, supine figures, in this case a young woman regurgitating a stream of flowers into a puddle of bile — a kind of visceral retake on the concept of the “deflowering” that would follow the marriage alluded to in the title.

She has exhibited widely, including in New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, The Hague, and Vaxjo, Sweden. Judith Schaechter, The Birth of Eve, 2013. The exhibit features approximately 45 of her stained-glass panels along with a selection of related drawings and process materials. Many of the creative decisions and color choices are left to the actual moment of working with glass. Image source: Judith Schaechter.

Schaechter says about her process, “My goal is to have no expectations for the work I do here, because it’s experimental and I want to be surprised.

Schaechter is a leading name in the world of glass art. The Path to Paradise: Judith Schaechter’s Stained-Glass Art celebrates the first survey and major assessment of the artist’s nearly 40-year career. Judith Schaechter creates resplendent stained glass works that fuse a medieval aesthetic with contemporary preoccupations. The "Agony and Ecstasy: Contemporary Stained Glass by Judith Schaechter" opens on Friday, Sept. 20. About Judith Schaechter. The Path to Paradise is the first survey and major scholarly assessment of groundbreaking artist Judith Schaechter’s 37-year career. The full-color, 160-page catalogue reproduces Schaechter’s 45 stained-glass panels, related drawings and process materials gathered from private and museum collections. Schaechter’s adaptation of Eve signals the paradigm shift that characterizes the exhibition more broadly. Watch a video of Judith Schaechter’s process of working in glass. Her studio practice is one of unparalleled intricacy: she crafts tiny glass tiles, then variously files, paints, and engraves each one before assembling them in large mosaic-like compositions several layers deep, which she presents in lightboxes. Pre-pandemic, Philadelphia-based glass artist Judith Schaechter 83 GL started this year on a high note, with major exhibitions making her work available to ever-growing audiences.

The work conjures mythological and art-historical references while simultaneously questioning, destabilizing, transforming, and departing from tradition. So don't ask her to define her art or deconstruct its meaning, the witty artist simply can't, and more importantly, won't.