Judith Solodkin featured in exhibit Transformations: Contemporary Artists at Winterthur

On display June 8, 2024–January 5, 2025, Transformations: Contemporary Artists at Winterthur invites visitors to explore how historical influences shape contemporary art. guild member Judith Solodkin contributed handmade hats as part of the Hatbox/Bandbox Collective in the exhibition. While Solodkin does not sell her hats, she crafts them to wear to art exhibition openings. She teaches lithography, digital embroidery, and soft sculpture at the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.

 “I make the hats for myself, and it takes about two weeks per hat,” she shared.

A wood veneer hat by artist Judith Solodkin will be displayed as part of Transformations.

Artist Andrew Raftery, professor of printmaking at Rhode Island School of Design, conceived this project after drawing inspiration from Winterthur’s bandbox collection.

 Bandboxes were used, primarily by women, to store and transport hats, clothing, and other personal items in the 1700s and 1800s. Fashioned out of pasteboard or thin wooden boards, they were typically decorated on the outside with block-printed papers and often lined on the interior with contemporary newspapers and journals, creating three-dimensional scrapbooks that merged pattern design and current events.

 Raftery invited other artists, including former students and colleagues, to create prints that cover the bandboxes. Then he thought, we should also get Judith to lend some hats, both because they are cool and also because they help show visitors one of the uses for bandboxes,” said Roeber, the exhibition curator.

Bandboxes by artist Andrew Raftery.