Artist Judith Brodsky is a distinguished printmaker and professor at Rutgers University but she sometimes suffers from imposter syndrome.

“I’ve had a pretty good run at an art career even though to this day I still feel a little bit behind,” she said. “And feel like I’m running to catch up simply because I didn’t go to art school and get my degree when I was 21 years old.”

Brodksy shared her feelings at PAFA’s Low-Residency MFA Program graduation. She addressed the second class of the Low-Residency program at the intimate August graduation ceremony, sharing her career trajectory and thanking them for the artwork they make.

“I want to tell you I admire you for what you’ve done,” she said. “You’ve restored my faith amidst all of the horrible aspects in the art world that one constantly encounters: the concentration on celebrities in the art world, on the problems of sexual harassment, and the problems of unequal representation and management for women and artists of color. One could get cynical but you restore my faith.”
 

Instead of letting issues in the art community get to her, Brodsky has always found a way to improve things. She’s been heavily involved in the feminist art movement, co-founding "The Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities" at Rutgers University and through her work at the Brodsky Center, her namesake; she’s strived to give professional printmaking opportunities to women and artists of color.

“When people ask me why I spend so much time doing what they would call administrative stuff I tell them it’s a performance piece,” she jokingly told the graduates. “I’m actually saying I’ve had a much greater impact on the art world through my activism than through my studio.”

PAFA absorbed the Brodsky Center this year from its former location at Rutgers University.

The Center's focus on contemporary art and supporting women and artists of color align well with PAFA's mission to educate students and to develop and promote the work of outstanding and innovative artists. Since its founding in 1986, the Center has completed over 300 editions with a diverse range of emerging and established artists who have become renowned in the field, including Barkley Hendricks, and artists in PAFA's collection such as Melvin Edwards, Joan Semmel, and Richard Tuttle. The Center has an inventory of over 3,000 works of art.

“It’s thrilling to be here, to be in this atmosphere, in a place where the whole conversation is about art instead of it being about science or engineering and interfering with the conversation that those of us who want to be talking about art wanted to do.”

Brodsky says working with various communities and organizations injected energy into her artwork.

“It’s nice not to be alone and it also helps to make connections with galleries, museums, and collectors,” she said. “Those of us who are artists or musicians are lucky, we don’t ever retire because our work and lives are synonymous but at the same time it’s not easy being an artist and you maybe find yourself as I did, using your creative energies in other ways.”

And that connection was key as she started her art career later than some.

“I always knew I was destined to be an artist but I got married and had 2 children. I went back to school in my mid-30’s, I got my MFA at Tyler School of Art,” she said “I commuted from Princeton, one and a half hours in the morning and one and a half hours in the afternoon in a car that would break down every now and then and I’d have to get out and fix it on the highway.”

Those bumps and detours in life and on the road, couldn’t keep Brodsky from her art.

“Don’t feel that you are somehow at a disadvantage compared to people who started their art careers in a normal fashion,” she said. “Don’t let anyone define you, nontraditional students can be professional artists just as much as traditional students.”