Artwork Description
Judy Chicago – Fused Mary Queen of Scots in Glass 2 (from Great Ladies)
Dimensions: 22.3 x 22.3 x 0.3″ finished size / 22.3 x 22.3 x 0.3″ size type
Year: 1999
Medium: etching and glass paint on fused glass
The “Fused Mary Queen of Scots” is one of two unique artworks that involve fusing, etching and kiln fired sprayed paint. The process is one Chicago developed with a glass artisan, which she says “took us a year and a half to figure out how to do.” The work is exhibited on a stand stamped with its title and date, and it represents a high point in Judy Chicago’s work with glass.
She continues, “I started out studying stained glass painting but found I didn’t like working in blacks and browns in colored glass, particularly because when I was studying china painting in the 1970’s, I observed that the china painters also painted on glass. They used a type of paint that is unknown in the glass world, one that allows very sophisticated color like on porcelain.” I went on to do a whole series of…(works in glass), casting first in Prague and then in Taiwan. One reason I became interested in glass…was that I was in California when Peter Voulkos and John Mason brought ceramics over from a craft to a fine art context. And I wanted to do that with glass. Many of my pieces are technical accomplishments.”
Judy Chicago’s artworks are found in the permanent collections of the world’s top museums. Gloria Steinem, upon introducing her long time friend as she was being honored by the Hammer Museum, famously said she could define art history as before and after Judy Chicago. There are numerous monographs and books about Judy Chicago, including the most recent monograph published by National Museum of Women in the Arts. Art historians and curators can search the Judy Chicago Portal, which combines her archives at Harvard, Penn State, and National Museum of Women in the Arts. In 2020 Judy Chicago completed a widely acclaimed collaboration with Dior Couture in Paris, in which her Female Divine monumental sculpture was erected outside the Rodin Museum in Paris and housed her banners posing the question “What if Women Ruled the World?” Read more about why Dior invited her to collaborate with them.