Judybeth Greene

Painting messages of peace

BY MITCHELL TROPIN

Judybeth Greene is hard at work most of the week as an attorney with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, busy protecting the voting rights of all Americans. But one day a week, she puts aside the law books and interoffice e-mails, replacing them with canvas, paints, and whimsy. She transforms into one of Takoma Park's more thoughtful artists, whose work touches on couples, relationships, the Middle East conflict, feminism, and Judaism.

In her studio on Willow Avenue, canvases cover every part of the room. With just a cursory glance around, the strength and expressiveness of Greene's work is clear–a gigantic pomegranate catches the eye, as does a large nude of a slightly zaftig woman. Depictions of violent images from the Middle East conflict force the viewer to stop and examine.

Greene has developed a reputation in the Washington area for her art on political themes and feminist issues. As an attorney with the Justice Department, she spends her days enforcing the Voting Rights Act, working with other attorneys and analysts who review changes in election procedures in states covered by the act.

Greene helps determine whether proposed changes in redistricting, polling places, voter registration procedures, special elections, or language diminish voting rights or discriminate.

Greene says her department's range of work has changed greatly over the years, as the political and social tone of America has changed. But the commitment of Greene and her colleagues remains.

"We are still able to do some very good work," she says.

A 13-year veteran of the department, Greene is proud of her accomplishments, such as bringing to trial one of the first cases on enforcing the right to register to vote at state motor vehicle offices.

But Greene also has made impressive contributions with her art.

A large part of Greene's work shows relationships from a woman's viewpoint. She recently created a series of seven drawings that tell the story of a couple meeting and coming together (with one panel showing the male lover freaking out over commitment issues). The series has two alternative endings: in one, the woman dances happily with the man; in the other, she's dancing happily alone.

Greene has found that seemingly insignificant creative decisions produce amazing reactions. A recent work, "Woman with Healing Scar," was conceived as an image of a woman recovering from heartbreak. Over the heart, Greene literally sewed a patch of canvas, but the sewing was not completed–one corner was left undone. Once on display, people were unable to resist the urge to pick at the canvas patch to see if anything was underneath. Finally she had to sew the patch on completely.

One woman who visited the display saw an entirely different message in the piece. She approached Greene and asked to purchase it, explaining that her daughter had been going through chemotherapy for breast cancer.

"The painting was a healing gift from the mother to the daughter." Greene says, adding that it moved her that her "art was able to touch somebody in another way."

Usually there is a direct link between the events in Greene's life and the subjects of her art, such as with her experience of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. That morning, Greene was forced to evacuate her Justice Department offices in downtown Washington. But instead of heading directly home, she went to Mimi's, a restaurant near Dupont Circle. The owner, Andy "Anas" Shallal, an Arab-American, has been a tremendous booster of Greene's work, as well as a good friend.

As the news of the day came across the restaurant's television sets, Greene found her view of the world changed forever.

"After being evacuated from my office," she says, "…trying to 'paint a message of peace' felt like a completely different endeavor."

The day's events spurred Greene to take action. Influenced by Jewish cooking author Joan Nathan, who has used food to facilitate discussions, Greene and Shallal searched through the Torah to find food items that both Arabs and Jews share. They started the "Food for Peace" project after finding what they call the "seven staples"–barley, dates, figs, grapes, olives, pomegranates, and wheat. Shallal used the items to create "peace meals" in the form of appetizers, while Greene created a series of prints that featuring the staples alone and in combinations. Their hope was to facilitate understanding and discussion by bringing together people from both cultures, over food familiar to all of them.

"Andy is very passionate about getting people together to talk," she says.

The Food for Peace project then led to one of Greene's most impressive works: her "Wall," which is a portable plexiglas and wooden version of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, an ancient remnant from Biblical times where visitors leave small slips of paper containing prayers in its cracks and crevices.

Greene's wall was created in connection with a project started by Ari Roth, director of Theatre J at the D.C. Jewish Community Center. Roth was staging "Via Doloras," a play by British playwright David Hare dealing with Israeli-Arab relations.ºRoth was holding a series of discussions about the Middle East situation and Greene was asked to contribute. She placed "the Wall," the size of a large suitcase, in the theatre lobby. To Greene's surprise, people started placing their own prayer slips in every single crack of Greene's creation.

What impressed Greene was how everyone who saw The Wall wanted it "to be their private place to speak with God." Similar to the Vietnam Memorial, Greene's wall can impart a sense of intimacy to a visitor, even in a large crowd.

"The Wall" continues to be circulated to groups and places. Time and again, people stop and place their thoughts in it.

Greene's experience as a yoga student led to a series of "Goddess" paintings that reflect Greene's love of the female figure. Attending yoga classes in Baltimore, Greene was taken with the power and grace of different yoga positions demonstrated by the instructor. But what made the poses most captivating were their secondary meanings.

"[They] gave me a metaphor to expand on language, and to expand on culture," Greene says. "I also found elements that went from one culture to another. For example, the Mother Goddess pose is a birthing position in Africa. I found the pose created a strong image about power and balance that was very centering."

Born in Boston, Greene was raised in Needham, one of the city's suburbs. The oldest of three siblings, she grew up in a Jewish family that was active in the local reform congregation. Her exposure and interest in art began early–she remembers her parents taking the family downtown to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and as a teenager, art teachers encouraged her to take advanced classes. By high school, she was taking college-level courses. As a harbinger of things to come, in one class Greene created a two-story long macramé hanging with "Shalom," the Hebrew word for peace, woven into the design.

Greene's pursuit of an art career came to an abrupt end when she told her father that a local art college wanted her to enroll.

"My father's response was quite emphatic: 'you are not going to art school,'" she says.

Later he softened his position by offering to pay for either law or art school if she finished college. Greene went to Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. as a pre-law student, and put art on the back burner. The coup de grace to her thwarted art ambitions was an art class in which the instructor viciously attacked her work.

"He excoriated me," she says.

From that point on, Greene focused on the law. "I made the decision that even if I had the chance to go to art school, I would rather go to law school, because law, with its logic, had a certain appeal," she says. "I would rather have someone criticize my logic than my art, because…I couldn't argue or protect myself if they made a comment about my art. It was if they were attacking me–there was no separation."

Greene devoted herself to becoming a lawyer, attending George Washington University's law center, which brought her to the Washington area. After graduation, Greene joined the Federal Elections Commission, doing enforcement work. She had pretty much stopped doing art–until she came to a realization.

"I was pleased with my job, but I was depressed as hell. After work I would come home and sit on the floor, finding it hard to get motivated to move," she says. "To get myself activated, I took a drama class. But then I realized that by stopping the art classes, I had cut off a part of my body–a limb. It was that fundamental."

Greene started taking art classes. Then she came up with the idea of combining her vacations with her renewed interest in art. She took week-long classes in Maine, Vermont, and New Mexico, where she visited the Santa Fe Ghost Ranch that Georgia O'Keeffe often painted. Moreover, she rediscovered the joys of being an artist.

In 1988, after returning from one of her vacations, Greene attended the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore, the only learning establishment in the area that is devoted entirely to art studies. Greene thrived in an environment where something always seemed to be happening in the classes and the hallways. Working out a compromise schedule with her superiors, Greene commuted from Baltimore while taking a full schedule of classes.

Since graduating, Greene's life continues to be divided between law and art.

Although her art has reflected political and social issues, Greene acknowledges that a recent event in her own life has caused a great shift in the direction of her work. Last December, she married Ron Fagnani.

Since the wedding, much of her new work features couples in playful, Chagall-inspired dances, embracing while floating freely in a blue environment.

When asked if the blissfulness reflected in her art was a result of her marriage, all she can say is "bingo."

The couples-related creations have the thread of humor that has always been an element of Greene's work. The titles include "Wedding Smooch" and "Honey I Love You, Let's Redecorate."

"I love putting sarcasm into my work. I like the interaction between that and the people who buy the art," she says. "They have their own story that goes with the art."

For more information on Judybeth Greene's artwork, see her website, www.judybeth.com.