My friend artist Shirley Hudson passed away on October 5, 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic. I don’t know how she died. I discovered her passing when I was trying to connect with her and realized I had lost her phone number and, instead, found her obituary on-line. We were not super close, but we would get together once a year or so and have lunch. I liked her enormously and respected her greatly as an artist. I sold her work from time to time when I had my physical gallery.
One of my most vivid memories of Shirley was when my assistant Kim and I visited her studio in a big warehouse space in Chicago that had been converted to artists’ spaces. Even though she officially lived with her mother and various family members in Chicago, her studio was her real home. She earned a living as a postal worker. I think she had some hard times as a young woman, but she rarely alluded to her difficult youth. Her life focus was on creating art that reflected her soul and connected her to the whole wide world. She was an optimist. I treasure having known her and her art.
Below are a series of Shirley’s mini torsos that I am particularly fond of:
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