For more than eight decades, Judy Targan has lived and breathed art.
When she attended her 50th college reunion back in 2005, she had to fill out a bio for the program and she described her life since graduation this way: “creating art, studying art, looking at art, talking about art, advising on art, collecting art, supporting art and living with art.”
“And nothing has changed since then,” Targan recently told the Village Green. “It’s been my passion all of my life. I couldn’t be without it.”
South Orange will celebrate artist Judy Targan 95th birthday with an eight-decade retrospective of her work at the Pierro Gallery, opening September 23, 2026. (Photo by Laura Griffin)
Targan, who turns 95 in October, will be featured in another solo show — this one an 87-year retrospective — at the Pierro Gallery at The Baird Community Center in South Orange, opening September 23 with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.
The show follows Targan’s evolution as an artist from her earliest work as a grammar student at NYC’s progressive Walden School through her decades of creating limited edition relief prints and her current oil paintings on wood that she describes as “fantasy landscapes.”
“To see the work Judy was making as far back as 1939 at the Walden School in New York City, and then to move through the timeline of her artistic life all the way to paintings she created this year, is a joyful ride through the mind of a woman who has devoted her life to art,” Arts & Cultural Affairs Director Blake Smith, who serves as chief curator for the gallery, told the Village Green. “You can see her experimentation, her evolution, and her incredible commitment to making art across nearly nine decades. Curating this show has been a true honor and pleasure for me.”
Targan’s home is filled with art from other artists that she’s collected through the years, but she spends most every day in her studio, creating her own art.
Artist Judy Targan spends the better part of each day, creating in her home studio in South Orange. (Photo by Laura Griffin)
“It feels like I’m really working 24 hours because I can be lying in bed and thinking of the painting that I’m working on. I’m picturing it and what I think should be changed or done, or, you know, this color should be darker, the patterning should be different,” she said. “I’m obsessed with it.”
Targan said Smith has been asking her to provide paintings for a retrospective for a couple of years, but she hesitated because of the work it would take to try to track down her older pieces and get them to the gallery. Then it occurred to her that some of her oldest artwork was stored upstairs in her home, where years ago she stashed what her parents had kept but didn’t take with them when they moved to Florida in retirement.
“They were always so supportive of me and my art,” Targan said. “I had a very different kind of upbringing.”
Targan, who moved to South Orange from New York City decades ago, has had numerous solo exhibitions including shows in Pennsylvania, New York, Toronto and Boston and been in group shows at the Newark Museum of Art, the Morris Museum and The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, among others, and was one of the founding artists of the SOMA Artist Studio Tour in 2003. Through the years, she has created a lot of commissioned art, including a boxed set of notecards for UNICEF.
Artist Judy Targan often uses a magnifying glass to get the details just right in her paintings. (Photo by Laura Griffin)
“I hope that everyone who comes to the exhibition gets a sense of Judy’s incredible love of art, but also of the life she has created for herself within the world of art. She has built a life around curiosity, creativity, learning and making, and there is something really special about being able to experience that through her work.”
For years, Targan has opened her studio and her home to the public for tours not only of her art but of the art she’s collected, and she enjoys showing other artists’ work and telling stories — a skill she honed in her 27 years as a docent at the Newark Art Museum.
“I’m a good storyteller,” she said. “And I have A LOT of stories.”
In addition to the opening reception on September 23, “Judy Targan: A Life in Art” at the Pierro Gallery can be seen anytime from September 23 through November 8 during gallery hours (Mon – Sun, 9 a.m. – 9 p.m.).
“To celebrate Judy, her incredible body of work, and the life she has devoted to art is truly an honor,” Smith said. “She has given so much to this community, and I feel incredibly lucky that I get to give something back to her by celebrating her here at the Pierro.”
