Judy Onofrio
Judy Onofrio (born November 21, 1939) is an American artist living in Rochester, Minnesota. She was born in New London, Connecticut and studied business law and economics at Sullins College in Virginia. She moved to Minnesota in 1967 and joined the Rochester arts scene.
In 1970 she became acting director of the Rochester Art Center and started the Total Arts Day Camp for children. She helped found the Minnesota Crafts Council in 1972 and helped start the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1975.
Onofrio began making clay art in the early 1970s, largely self-taught, during a time when craft and the women’s movement encouraged new kinds of art. She worked in a basement clay studio, creating glittery objects and installations from clay with beads, glass, and found hardware. In the early 1980s she began outdoor installations inspired by regional grottoes and often staged large-scale events that included fire.
Her first major solo show, Judyland, opened at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1993. She also works with wood and jewelry. In the late 2000s her work shifted to dried bone sculptures, influenced by a cancer diagnosis, as she explored life and death. The bone works can be baskets, vessels, or wall pieces, and she has described them as a study of the soul’s life cycle.
In 2010 she collaborated with her daughter, photographer Jennifer Onofrio Fornes, at St. Olaf College. Judy is known for playful, colorful, mixed-media works that combine ceramics, beads, wood, paper, and found objects. She is also famous for her extensive button collection, which she uses in her art.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:35 (CET).