Judy Fundingsland, About
JUDY FUNDINGSLAND
Judy Fundingsland talks with her hands. In an art exercise of envisioning one self as a child and as an adult - the first clay sculpture Fundingsland had ever made - she made it blind.
“I had to close my eyes and hold the clay. When I opened them, it was right here,” says Fundingsland holding the small sculpture of a child’s foot in her palms. “I didn’t realize how much my hands really talk until I grabbed a chisel and a hammer, walked over to a pile of rubble, and started breaking off cement. That really calmed me down. When I was sitting there I became very calm very quiet, and I want to get back to that [mental] space.”
Whether she’s working out a leatherwork project or trying to determine an important life decision, if Fundingsland doesn’t know what to do or how to solve the problem or fix it, she picks it up and touches it. From there she always knows what to do. “Working with my hands is a lifeline practice, helping me create balance. If I am struggling with something, and then I’m working with my hands, the answer is suddenly there. Whether it’s finding a direction or creating something, if I’m working with my hands the picture becomes suddenly clear to me of where I have to go. So in my hands, there is a language,” she says, “that seems to work for me.”
For Fundingsland, that language began as an early apprenticeship at the age of nine with her mother setting her loose on a sewing machine to make doll clothing. By the time she hit her teens, the Home Economics teacher had nothing to teach her that she didn’t already know, and also set her free to make and design her own sewing projects. Eventually she was enlisted by her husband in 1979 to help do leather work making chaps and horse saddles, repairing boots, and crafting fine leather fly fishing rod cases.
Her tactile connection to sewing serves also as the metaphor for what she wants the Killdeer Artisan Guild to be—one giant quilting circle of artists in which people get together to create, to talk and connect, and to support each other. The former owner of a saddle shop in Ronan and now the current owner of The Russian Olive Bed and Breakfast five miles south of Arlee, Fundingsland brings a strong entrepreneurial background to the Guild. Knowing that many artists shy away from the marketing and business side of the art world, so long as Fundingsland can get her hands dirty, she intends to help them find their way.