About Judit

Judit Varga was born and raised in Hungary, she studied mathematics and art in college then she went to the Moholy Nagy University of Arts and Design in Budapest, Hungary to study Studio Ceramics and earned her MFA degree in 1991. Shortly after graduating she moved to the USA, eventually setting up her ceramic studio in Maryland. For more than 15 years she also worked as a professional lecturer of ceramics at undergraduate education. In 2019 she became a full-time studio artist focusing on her art while occasionally giving workshops on the international stage of ceramic education. 

She is an active member of the International Academy of Ceramics. Her work is held in private and public collections nationally and internationally.

Ars poetica:  
I convey emotions and feelings into colors and surfaces; transform gestures and motions into circles, lines; capture the transient moments in my life into the malleable clay and confine them into forever shapes of ceramics. I love the poetic, sensitive aspect of the material. I use clay to speak freely in a world that does not understand my mother tongue; it gives me tremendous freedom to communicate spontaneously, without restrictions, just be myself without a pause or accent. From the very beginning my work was based on loss and the visual interpretation of voids. I made forms inside baskets, made by organic materials so after firing only the form and the imprint of the patterns remained; the void was always present and I found that melancholic beauty enchanting.  Eventually I ended up being inspired by tiny objects I collected over the years during my hikes and walks on the beach with my kids:  seeds, pods, cocoons, shells; relics of time in nature.I use these as a metaphor for bandaged or broken; empty or nurtured; pregnant or hollow. And as I built tight forms from circles and lines, empty containers, decayed vessels, I also built my own visual vocabulary, which I was able to use to make sentences, to start to communicate.