As a sculptor who uses organic materials, I am a second generation native of Los Angeles, with geographic and cultural ties in the Ukraine and in the local community of Boyle Heights. I have wonderful childhood memories of digging into moist adobe clay, while tending the family garden. Here, I sculpted a variety of round and oval containers and explored the shapes and textures of many types of seed pods. These were thrilling moments of discovery. For over the past three decades, I have found inspiration for my work in Southern California’s rugged chaparral and high desert landscapes, not far from well traveled highways and freeways.

My concerns as an artist are centered in the cyclic rhythms and patterns of life; natural orders of growth and decay; and ecologies that sustain these processes. My work is a blend of artistic inquiry, complimented by science research. I have found inspiration for the current Yucca Seed Pod Series, in Vasquez Rocks parkland, with its massive tangerine rock formations and colonies of Chaparral Yucca, at the edge of the Mohave Desert. Here, I have focused on the interrelated reproductive cycles between the Chaparral Yucca and its sole pollinator, a tiny Yucca Moth. Without the tiny moth to pollinate its blossoms, the Chaparral Yucca could not produce seeds and would become extinct. The tiny Yucca Moth needs Chaparral Yucca’s developing seedpods as a place to deposit and incubate its eggs. Inside the growing seed pods, the moth’s eggs hatch into larvae, which mature along with the seeds.

Each sculpture begins with a clay foundation, my impressions of the massive rock formations at Vasquez Rocks. The physical process of working with clay—pressing, twisting and lifting— connects me to the universal rhythms of life. Dry yucca seed pods are inserted at rhythmic intervals, throughout each sculpture as tangible symbols of complex and interrelated processes of pollination and regeneration. The clay compositions serve as armatures upon which the organic paper sculptures are built with multiple layers paper mache. Once the paper sculptures dry, the clay armatures are removed; and a light weight paper sculpture remains.

Judy Leventhal’s art has been exhibited in juried exhibitions, invitational exhibitions and festivals. Her community involvement with children and youth has been recognized by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Capital Children’s Museum in Washington DC and the Rowland Reading Foundation. Ms. Leventhal’s training includes courses at Otis College of Art and Design and ISOMATA and individual tutorials. She has presented programs in the arts for adults through UCLA Extension and Otis College of Art and Design.