Judith Roth: A Life’s Work & Ritual and Spirituality

“We have been granted incredible access by the family of the late Judith Roth,” says TACHP curator Caren Helene Rudman, “and it is an opportunity to share her warm spirit and her enthusiasm for life. Even more incredible is the family has authorized us to sell much of her work so that her legacy will carry on.”

For those who are not familiar with her work, Judith Roth was a revered Chicago artist, loving mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, friend, and teacher; who passed away from cancer on February 9, 2019 at the age of 83. This selection of work from throughout her career sheds light into what makes each piece unique and special. For example, after years of studying the body, she was able to capture not just the form, but the nuance of a gesture and a moment in time in such a way as to make her style instantly recognizable.

The challenge to the arts community was to consider how our society often focuses on difference rather than similarity when it comes to religion. Rudman was inspired after a visit to a Tibetan Church in Singapore, where “I saw overlapping rituals similar to my own American Jewish Heritage.”  Rudman selected guest juror and featured artist, Gabriela Levya, who addresses these challenges in her own installations, “This is the most extensive group of work I’ve displayed at TACHP and possibly the most meaningful for me as we find ourselves both profoundly alone and profoundly connected to everything.”

Born in Mexico City Levya moved to Chicago in 2012 and earned her Master’s in Human Development and Gestalt Psychotherapy. This exhibit allows her to once again mix her passions, psychology and art, to create pieces that invites the individual on a spiritual journey with its own message and story. Each image in her installation appears out of the darkness in a ghost-like way, as if the image floats in our minds like a memory or dream. From the deep calm, there is a ‘luminous clarity’.

With over two dozen contributing artists, this exhibit may serve to show that beyond religion, sect, or theism of any type (including ‘anti-’) there is more similarity than difference, more that unites than separates, and what better place to hold that conversation than in the ‘secular cathedral’ of an art gallery.