Judith Rushin Reviewed in Burnaway

Parallel Reviewed in Burnaway:

“The most engaging works in the exhibition delicately balance their topical connotations with a refreshing sense of visual ambiguity or material mutability. In textile works that appear as spectral garments, one hung on a wall and another suspended on a clothes hanger, Florida artist Judy Rushin suggests the lingering presence of absent figures—not only through the implied shape of a body but also the unraveling textiles’ material qualities. Rushin’s INCH Coat bares an angsty message in tattered woven scrawl: IM NEVER COMING HOME.”

FSU Department of Art Associate Professor Judy Rushin has work featured at Whitespace Gallery, in Atlanta, GA. When announced in May, Parallels was to be curator Teresa Bramlette Reeves’ exploration of the alternate world created by Covid-19 shutdowns using the “multiverse” theory. “A previous sense that many shared about the surreal nature of our existence has morphed into a more urgent, disruptive and anxious time,” she said in her curatorial statement.

This version of an alternate reality, for which artwork had been chosen, was promptly replaced by another one. The widespread demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd led Bramlette Reeves to realize that parallel social and political universes occupy the same physical space and always have.