Then, when clay couldn't measure up to Onofrio's ambitions, she started making soft sculptures, hearts and lima bean shapes that could be stacked, so that the compression became part of the treatment of the material--"big buns," as Onofrio describes them, and she obviously wasn't talking about just hamburgers and hot dogs. They led to sewn environments, complete with enormous trees and other organic forms that looked like mutant vegetables. Then there were some peculiar installations featuring truncated ceramic poles, phallic forms, with areas covered with Astroturf, gravel and piles of dirt. Those works from the late 70s and early 80s occupy an artistic zone bounded by minimalism, pop, funk and earth art, and they have a boldness that seems appealing enough in post-postmodern retrospect.

"I like change," Onofrio has said, and she has gone through a remarkable range of styles In the mid-80s she went on to architectural pieces, rough wooden works that suggest a love of plywood, balloon frame construction (shades of Frank Gehry), and the vernacular slat style found in corn cribs. They gave way to some unusual installation/performance works that consisted of large wooden structures built only to be burned, a kind of drawing with fire. A related piece used garden pots acquired--where else?--at garage sales, with colored (gun)powder, to suggest both fireworks and a new twist on a kiln firing. These also enabled the artist to indulge another enthusiasm: "I've always been a pyromaniac," she admits with glee.

And a collector. As she was accumulating stuff on the side while moving energetically from ceramics to more architectural work, she retained the interest in outsider art she identified with her great-aunt Trude, who painted on trays and furniture and had a garden filled with wonders. Onofrio has always loved the visionaries who created large-scale, often madcap works, from Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles to Howard Finster's Paradise Garden in Georgia to Gaudi's Parque Guell in Barcelona, with its magnificent undulating benches covered with china bits and pieces. She sought out midwestern examples, such as the Grotto of the Blessed Virgin in Dickeyville, Wisconsin, a fantastic display of assemblage. Over time, on the hillside behind the house on a quiet street that she shares with her husband, Burt (a retired neurosurgeon from the Mayo Clinic), Onofrio has created her own version, Judyland, a continuing work-in-progress. It combines grottoes, sculptural pieces and other delights featuring a dizzying range of materials, from barn-roof ventilator covers to tractor seats, from horseshoes to glass telephone-wire insulators. In an attempt to "move the outside inside," the artist has started on the interior of her house. The front hall is gradually being coated with buttons, plastic flowers and all manner of other stuff; one of the latest additions is a hand juicer that is now part of the ceiling decoration.

Photo: Judyland installation, Minneapolis Institute of Art, 1993, photo credit: Rik Sferra
Copyright American Craft Council Jun/Jul 1996