You can see the sea in Rochester-based sculptor Judy Onofrio’s latest exhibit titled “Deep Dive.” It is part of Marine Art Museum’s Freshwater Series and will be on view in Winona from June 29, 2024, to Jan. 5, 2025. There will be a New Look Preview Party for the exhibit on July 12, 2024.
“I was raised on the Atlantic Ocean, and I spent all my time through high school on the beach,” says Onofrio. “When the pandemic came, I decided to go back to the beach. In my mind, that’s where I went.”
Elements of the sea — from octopuses and mermaids to seals and dolphins — have been swimming through Onofrio’s whimsical and deeply layered sculptural work for much of her long career. As she dived into her past works, she found more than 35 of her sculptures included fish. Her oceanic history makes her complex and often playful works the perfect fit for the Minnesota Marine Art Museum’s mission of exhibiting “great art inspired by water.”
“Deep Dive,” curated by Christopher Atkins, the curator at the Sioux City Art Center, will present Onofrio’s sculptures that range from vibrant mosaic works from early in her catalog to her more recent monochromatic bone sculptures inspired from her bout with cancer. It will also include more colorful fruit-inspired pieces connected to the joy of healing and returning home and new works focused on water.
Onofrio was born in 1939 and moved to Rochester in the late ‘60s. She played a foundational role with the Rochester Art Center, founding its Total Art Day Camp and serving as its director in 1970. Over her career, Onofrio worked with ceramics in the ‘70s, and set fire to wooden structures and made soft sculptures in the ‘80s. She is also well known for the intricate brooches and beaded bracelets that she’s created. Her works have been found in exhibits from Egypt to Ireland. She’s been honored with the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award.
The title for Onofrio’s “Deep Dive” exhibit plays with the double idea of diving into water and also exploring Onofrio’s past work. “‘Deep Dive’ was just the idea of really going for broke,” says Onofrio.
Lily Dozier / Post Bulletin
One of the new pieces that will be presented in the exhibit is called “Holding Up.” The large sculpture depicts a woman clad in attire dominated by black and white holding a writhing multicolored, patterned fish curving over her head. It requires the viewer to crane their head upwards to see the top of the sinuous fish. Onofrio has been working on the piece with her studio assistants for the last six months. It is sculpted from foam, fiberglass, sculptural epoxy, metallic paints, shells, mirror, wood and other materials. She describes it as a “real bun-buster.”
Like the “Deep Dive” title, “Holding Up” also plays with double meanings. It literally depicts a woman “holding up” a fish, but it also explores how Onofrio was forced to “hold up” amid the sorrow of losing her husband, Burt, in December 2022, and reinvent herself.
“Deep Dive” in part looks back to youthful experiences by the ocean. “We were always on a beach, I was never really taken away from the beach until we moved here,” says Onofrio. “I pretend like the corn fields are the beach.”
Onofrio’s father, eventually a four-star admiral in the Navy, was an aid for presidents Roosevelt and Truman. “When I was a kid, he’d bring me objects from all over the world,” says Onofrio, who is still an avid collector and included many found objects in her earlier art.
“With a lot of the early mosaics I was using a lot of found objects. I’m making the objects now,” says Onofrio. “I am making it all now. Before it was all out of collections.”
One of Onofrio’s most important memories from her time as a teenager living in Virginia Beach was discovering a building that had been engulfed in a hurricane-swept sand dune. “I saw a sifting hole in the sand and climbed into it. It was a nightclub that had been along the beach and had closed. And there were still murals, and tickets on the floor, and furniture. It was just like one of these magical experiences you would never forget. There were a few light shafts coming through.”
Onofrio still feels that magic of discovery when she walks into her studio. “I love being in my studio,” says Onofrio. “I can’t walk into that studio without seeing something to do. I don’t make decisions about who’s going to follow it, who’s going to want it, who’s going to buy it. I just do intuitively what feels right.”
Many of the important regional museums have Onofrio’s works in their permanent collections including the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the North Dakota Museum of Art. “I like when people tell me that it is giving them joy and it makes them happy every time they look at my work,” says Onofrio. “I love getting that kind of feedback.”
Lily Dozier / Post Bulletin
Where: Minnesota Marine Art Museum, 800 Riverview Drive, Winona, Minnesota.
When: June 29, 2024, thought Jan. 5, 2025.
Online: Visit the museum website at
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