The first Friday in January was an especially frigid, dark and icy one in Anchorage. But those who made it to the new exhibit at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art were treated to a skilled display of animal whimsy.
“Old and New: Soft, Sweet, Feathered and Furred” is a collection of graphite drawings by Anchorage artist Christopher Judd. There are bears, a walrus, caribou and dogs. They wear neckties and peacoats, business suits and aprons. Many have ridiculously tiny hats or crowns.
“I love whimsy. I love character, and I love storytelling,” Judd wrote. “All of these drawings have pieces and parts of all three loves.”
The core of the work was created a few years ago, Judd said, when he drew a jackal in a collared shirt. “That’s what kicked off this long relationship with animals.”
Despite being nonhuman and surreal, the animals manage to look like personalities you might know — a cranky co-worker or a slick salesperson. Drawn in graphite on Moleskine paper, many have a lifelike quality. You can almost feel the warm folds of fur or a wet dog nose through the frame.
“Soft, Sweet, Feathered and Furred” is for the most part a lighthearted exhibit — mainly animals and some sci-fi characters — but it is a body of work that has been produced by years of serious, grinding discipline.
It began in 2008, when Judd was 21 years old and enrolled at University of Alaska Anchorage. He was a few years into college, working on a civil engineering degree and “miserable.”
Judd was partying a lot, dropping classes and “just really super depressed.” It got bad enough that he could barely get out of bed. At this low point he stumbled across an online art forum.
“And that’s when I discovered that concept art is a thing.”
Judd was artistic as a child. His grandmother, he recalls, had a wall covered with his drawings. But when he got older he set aside art for other interests, including “unhealthy amounts” of video games.
Concept art was a bridge between the two interests — a discipline of the arts that creates much of the visual design of video games, movies and other media.
“I thought that if you wanted to work in video games, you had to be a computer programmer. (I thought) that all the things I loved seeing in video games — the visuals and the beautiful animations — everything was from the mind of coders, and it wasn’t an artistic pursuit.”
Part of the concept art forum was dedicated to people uploading work from their sketchbooks so others could see their progress. Judd said you could see a member go from the crudest stick-figure drawings to professional-quality artistic work over the course of years.
Judd thought, “Oh, this is a path that you can do,” he said. “It’s just a skill. You can build this skill. Like I was hooked at that point.”
Judd calls what happened next “a level of mania” that felt like a combination of obsession and excitement. For the next six months or so, he was drawing almost every waking hour, to the point that he was sleeping only a couple hours a night.
Working with the idea that drawing is the foundational skill for other art forms, “I was basically drawing 24 hours a day because it was like ‘Oh, I’ve got to catch up, I’m so far behind.’”
After a few months working alone and watching online tutorials — at this point civil engineering classes were a thing of the past — Judd walked into a life drawing class at UAA and asked if he could “sit in,” or enroll off the books.
The professor was Hugh McPeck, a longtime Alaska artist and instructor who died in 2014. It’s not something that’s officially allowed, but McPeck gave him a spot.
“(McPeck) was just like, ‘Yeah, you can sit in. But you have to show up every day and you have to do all the homework.’”
Obsessed with catching up on lost time, Judd did it all and more. With trepidation, he broke the news to his parents that he was dropping his engineering degree; they were unbelievably supportive, he said. He enrolled in drawing classes and helped start a life drawing group outside of class. At McPeck’s encouragement, he traveled to take summer courses at the Art Students League of New York, a renowned school in New York City where some of the most famous artists in history have studied — Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’Keeffe and Mark Rothko among them.
The atelier-style program got him drawing in studio with live models from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, and spending his one day off at museums and galleries. Studying under instructors including artist Dan Thompson for the summer, he said, taught him more than he’d learned in all his other classes and online tutorials. When he returned to UAA and other drawing students noticed how much he’d improved, several decided to go with him to the New York City school the next three summers.
Judd graduated from UAA with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2016. His thesis show was a series of oil paintings of his grandmother, who’d once papered her walls with his early works.
After that, he tried to “make a go at working as an artist, which … didn’t really go,” Judd said, laughing. He’s shown work around town at restaurants, cafes and pot shops. He’s done the booth scene at local fairs, doing live drawing and selling prints. He never felt he was making a secure living as a working artist in Alaska, he said. But he feels fortunate to have a supportive family and has been able to continue developing his skills in and outside of UAA.
One line of work Judd got some traction on was commissioned pet portraits. He said he’s found them much easier to sell than portraits of people.
“People will spend way more money on their pets,” Judd said. “Once you learn how to draw fur, it’s easier in a way.”
Many of the animal characters in his show at IGCA are part of a collection he’s developing for an illustrated alphabet book. Judd generally uses Faber-Castell pencils in grades ranging from 8b to 6h for his graphite drawings. He likes Moleskine paper, he said, because it has a warm quality.
Depicting animals in human clothing is a very specific — but nonetheless established — niche in the arts, Judd said. The challenge is in how to avoid it looking like Photoshop slapped an animal head on a human body.
Judd wants his animals to look like they make their own kind of sense, which is its own skill.
“To make human clothes fit on a walrus, you really have to manipulate it quite a bit,” Judd said.
Judd has long had to navigate the extremes of depressive lows and intensely productive highs. He’s learned that managing it comes down to diet and exercise, he said, and making sure he’s getting good sleep.
Judd has recently launched into teaching at the school that gave him his start. About three years ago, UAA’s life drawing instructor unexpectedly dropped out and Judd was tapped to teach the class as an adjunct professor.
He loves teaching, Judd said, and hopes to give students “a fraction” of the quality of instruction that he benefited from in places like New York.
“The one thing about drawing is that it’s not hard,” Judd said. “It’s just a ton of time, and a ton of dedication.”
“Old and New: Soft, Sweet, Feathered and Furred” is on view through the end of January at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage. Christopher Judd and artist j.Reto will talk about their work at a closing reception 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 31. Refreshments will be provided. (427 D Street; igcaalaska.org)
Reporting for this project was supported by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism.