When the work beckons, you come. These days, tracking down American installation artist Judy Pfaff is akin to a groupie following their favorite band’s tour dates. A glass-blowing residency in Washington state, a month spent at her studio in upstate New York, Pfaff’s migratory habits are much like her work–you never know what’s going to come next. It’s part of the deal when you’re one of the pioneering–and most sought after–installation artists in the country.

Photography by Grace Roselli, Pandora's BoxX Project

Fortunately, Sarasotans have a sneak peek at Pfaff’s next tour stop: the Sarasota Art Museum, where Pfaff will unveil her largest site-specific installation since 2017 with Judy Pfaff: Picking Up the Pieces. It’s difficult to describe Pfaff’s latest installation, because, well, it isn’t there yet. The installation, set to open in November, has been built piece by piece in her upstate New York studio and will be shipped to Sarasota sometime in October for the final assembly. No one, including (SAM) Executive Director Virginia Shearer, is quite sure what it will look like. “We’ve talked to her and we know it’s going to be big and it’s going to have a lot of light,” says Shearer with a chuckle. “Judy doesn’t give you preparatory drawings per se–she’ll give you a sense of what her concept is and might provide a glimpse or two into her creative process with photos and a short video, but it all will come together here in Sarasota.”

To gain a better understanding of what Picking Up the Pieces might look like, one has to delve into who Pfaff is as an artist. Born in post-war London, Pfaff spent her early years playing in the bombed remnants of a cityscape, before moving to Detroit as a teen. Now in her 70s, Pfaff is the definition of a multi-hyphenate artist–she is a welder, designer, glassblower, painter, sculptor and printmaker to name a few of skills. She specializes in and has become famous for her site-specific installations that draw heavily on the surrounding environment. The materials she uses vary just as widely as the final product, from welded steel to melted plastic to blown glass to neon lights, Pfaff employs a seemingly endless array of transformed objects to create her designs. 

Photography by Peter Aaron/ OTTO

There are, however, a few things that are publicly known about the exhibit. The first, is that Picking Up the Pieces is a homecoming of sorts for Pfaff. Back in 1981, Pfaff unveiled one of her first exhibitions, Rorschach, at The Ringling Museum of Art. Flash forward to 2010, Pfaff found herself in Sarasota yet again–this time visiting the then dilapidated Sarasota High School building, which would go on to become SAM. “She got to be inside Sarasota High School when it was neglected, with the windows pulled out and no air conditioning and she got to imagine what a work of art might become in these spaces,” says Shearer. “So we invited her back here to visit with us a couple of years ago to see the new museum and what she might want to work with us on and she immediately responded to the 30-foot ceilings and our third floor galleries.”

This brings us to the next clue we have about Picking Up the Pieces: since Pfaff last visited SAM, multiple hurricanes have hit the Gulf Coast, including the devastating Hurricane Ian. “She came back for another site visit last fall and was really struck by the destruction south of us in Sarasota,” says Shearer. “Since then, her ideas have changed–she’s creating a brand new, site-specific, immersive installation that’s going draw on her love of our climate, ecology and light–everything that is so wonderful about Sarasota–but it’s also going to be informed by the destruction and environmental changes of the hurricane.” So much of what Picking Up the Pieces will look like is unknown. While to many, that may breed uncertainty, to Shearer it’s part of the beauty and by extension, part of what SAM is trying to do. For a museum that is relatively new, fostering an environment of trust is part of what has and will continue to build their reputation as an incubator for some of the top contemporary artists in the world. “A lot of what I think is special and unique about what we’re doing here at SAM is that we’re providing the space, opportunities and resources for artists to dream big–as well as the trust that they are going to deliver,” says Shearer. “It’s a labor of love on the artist’s part that’s combined with a deep trust on our end in terms of not knowing what the final outcome will be until the work is finished here. Because Picking Up the Pieces is site responsive and specific, it’ll never look the same way even if the components are deinstalled and put together someplace else. It only functions this way at one time, so you have to experience it here in Sarasota.”