Her Work

A poet who writes about the lives of artists, I work at the conjunction of hypernarrative, magic realism, and information art.

Reviewed in Postmodern Culture, The New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Modern Fiction Studies (MFS), and The London Independent, among many others, my work has been exhibited/published internationally including Eastgate, The Iowa Review Web, Blue Moon Review, Sao Paulo Biennial, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Institute for Contemporary Art New Orleans, San Antonio Art Institute, P.P.O.W., St. Martin's Press, E.P. Dutton, SITE, The Los Angeles Institute for Contemporary Art, Heller Gallery at the University of California at Berkeley, the National Library of Madrid, Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, The Houston Center for Photography, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Heresies, Seal Press, Franklin Furnace, Visual Studies Workshop, San Francisco Art Institute, Springer-Verlag, Tanam Press, Tisch School of the Arts, MIT Press, Target Video, FLEFF, San Francisco Center for the Book, the Richmond Art Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts website.

As an arts journalist and arts advocate, I have worked most notably as Editor of NYFA Current (formerly Arts Wire Current) an Internet-based National journal on social, economic, philosophical, and political issues affecting the arts and culture, sponsored by The New York Foundation for the Arts. I am currently the director of Art California, a web portal to the art and artists of California.

A pioneer on the Internet and in electronic literature, I wrote and programmed Uncle Roger, (Art Com, 1986) one of the first hyperfictions and in the ensuing years created a series of innovative literary works that run on computer platforms and were published by Eastgate and on the Internet. In 1993, I was invited to Xerox PARC where I worked in CSL (Computer Science Laboratory) as the first artist in their artist-in-residence program. In 1994, I created one of the first arts websites, Making Art Online, originally commissioned in collaboration with the ANIMA site in Vancouver (CSIR/Western Front) and currently hosted on the website of the Walker Art Center.

I have also been instrumental in making the arts an integral part of the Internet. I founded the Arts Conference on the WELL, was the initial consultant for the Internet Yellow Pages, was a founding editor of the seminal Leonardo Electronic News, (which became Leonardo Electronic Almanac) introduced art students to the Internet in a series of summer workshops in the early 90's, was an initial consultant for Open Studio, and taught web design at the San Francisco Art Institute as a visiting faculty member. For over ten years I worked with Arts Wire and the New York Foundation for the Arts to bring artists, arts organizations, arts news, and art information onto the Internet. In 2003, I edited an MIT Press book on women who work in new media.

My work looks at society in multiple ways -- ranging from the bawdy feminist take on office politics in 500 3X5 Cards and Other Stories to the poetic sorrow expressed in Ask for Sanctuary. For all societies -- from ancient Greek to contemporary times -- the freedom to make art in such diverse ways is of primary importance in the creation of vibrant and lasting cultures.

Ideally, print literature and e-literature; sequential literature and hyperfiction; painting and new media; are parallel art forms where writers in each medium understand each other's vision and, as between poetry and fiction, sometimes move with ease between the mediums.

Judy Malloy: My life

Early Years

Conceived in Texas where my Father was stationed in 1941, I was born Judith Ann Powers in Boston, MA on January 9, 1942, one month after Pearl Harbor. One month after Pearl Harbor.

The Boston and Maine Railroad ran beside our back yard, and on the other side of the tracks was the Aberjona River, the same river that polluted by WR Grace chemical company in neighboring Woburn, figures in A Civil Action.

In the summer we -- my parents and my two brothers, one of whom is autistic -- went to Cape Cod and to New Hampshire. There I wrote and drew the trees and rocks and water, walked in the mountains, and paddled an old green canoe in the lake. I played tournament tennis, and in High School I was the Captain of the tennis team. In the Winter, the snow was a pleasure. I skied in New Hampshire and Vermont.

I still have a Bible that I received as a prize for telling a Bible story at summer camp in the Berkshires.

Some of the happiest moments I remember are the times I spent with my best friend Christie and her family. We both were artists, and we went on painting expeditions together, painting the ocean and harbors on the Cape. Her father was an MIT physics professor of German descent, who worked on radar for the US and England during World War II.

My mother, who had been a chauffer for composer Nadia Boulanger after she graduated from Radcliffe, became a newspaper editor. She was author of an award-wining series of articles in support of a program that gave African American inner city children the opportunity to attend suburban schools. Later she was Editor of the Somerville Journal, and then Managing Editor of the Somerville Journal; the Cambridge Chronicle; and the Watertown Press.

I always had a calling, an inner vision of being an artist, and I began painting and writing when I was in primary school -- riding my bicycle to places where I would paint or sketch or walking in the hills near my home with paper and pen in my bookbag. Childhood memories of making art form the background for my hypernarrative its name is Penelope. (Eastgate, 1993)

My mother's father -- W. Huston Lillard -- told us stories of Vienna, Austria where after World War II, he had served with the United Nations as Chief of the Resettlement Division of the International Refugee Organization.

As Chief of the Resettlement Division of the International Refugee Organization in Austria. He helped resettle many thousands of refugees from Poland, Hungary, Russia, Greece, Spain and many other places, including and "Volksdeutsche" Christians from Russia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, and Bulgaria who refused to accept Communism, and thousands of Jewish refugees on their way to Israel.

In the early 1930's, "Cappy", who had been an educator, the head coach of the Dartmouth Football Team, and an advocate for American football, went to Germany when one of his friends in the German academic world was imprisoned. He contacted Himmler's office and after a visit to Magdeburg with an SS driver and 'escort' was instrumental in securing his friends release.

I don't remember exactly when the troubles began. They were not as frequent at this time in my life. But I remember these things: when I was a child, the door of our family car flew open going around a curve, and I (in the back seat) was thrown out in the middle of a downtown street. There was an oak tree at the bottom of a steep hill near my home, and three or four times I lost control of my bicycle and crashed into it. I remember this particularly because it did not seem like something I was doing, and it always happened at the same place. On a ski trip in high school, my car got stuck on a railroad tracks; I was able to get it off just before the train came.

At Middlebury College, I was on the ski team my first year. I played tournament tennis, hiked and camped in the mountains, lived in a dormitory where we spoke French at meals, studied literature, classics, painting, drawing, and art history, painted the Vermont hills, made experimental books, played violin in a quartet, built a raft and floated down the river that ran through town, questioned some principles of physics and received a D from Professor Benny Wissler who made it very clear what he thought of women in the sciences, was almost shot by hunters while sketching in a cow field. (They thought I was a groundhog, they said. If I hadn't stood up when I did, I would not be alive today.)

One spring I went to New York City with the Middlebury tennis team. I played at Forest Hills, and then I went into the city by myself. I remember seeing an exhibition of (I think) Leonard Baskin's work, walking up the spiral ramp of the Guggenheim, and then somehow I found a studio where two artists were playing chess and drinking whiskey from tin cups. They offered me some whiskey. I drank it, missed the station on my way back to Forest Hills, and chose the path that led to an artist's life.

It began on a rocky road -- one in which for many years I worked at odd jobs to support myself. They included catalog editor for the Library of Congress, information retrieval for Ball Brothers Research Corporation in Boulder, Colorado, (a NASA contractor that made the Orbiting Solar Observatory) as well as information jobs for J. Walter Thompson (on a contract for the Goddard Space Center) and in phytopathology at the University of California. In the course of this work, I did information retrieval, learned programming languages, and studied systems analysis and design.

Initially, there was no relationship between these jobs and the work that I created in my studio, but gradually the imagery of technology and the idea of information as imagery began to seep into my work.

Romance and Adventure in the Sixties

I wanted to work in the arts, but no one would hire me, so I went to work at the Library of Congress. Washington, DC was exciting. I remember embassy parties, tennis with a Navy cadet, painting, museums, my apartment near Dupont Circle furnished with orange crates, my first car, a 1949 Plymouth. It died in a middle lane on the New Jersey Turnpike when it blew a plug in the water system. I managed to get it the side of the road, was told it was not fixable, sold it for (I think) $25.00 to the garage and then took the bus to New York City where I had been headed.

In 1965, I fell in love with Jim Malloy. I met him in College Park, Maryland at an electromagnetic research laboratory where a blue vacuum chamber simulated the "D" layer of silence, the place where communications are lost. I was writing abstracts and organizing technical literature.

Born and raised in West Virginia, where his Father was a Union man working for Union Carbide, Jim was third or fourth generation Irish. He had worked with vacuum technology at Westinghouse.

Perhaps it would have made more sense to go to Canada, but with motorbikes, a tent, and a small amount of money, Jim and I went to Europe on a German freighter. It was the sixties, that is one explanation; another is that, although Jim was not against the draft, he was against the Vietnam War which he had studied extensively, and he had written a detailed letter to then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara protesting this country's involvement in the Vietnam War.

The adventure was not without difficulties. In Washington, D.C., right before we left, Jim was following me home when his motorcycle brakes inexplicably failed. He crashed into the back of a car I was driving, severely injuring his face.

In Germany, almost all of our money disappeared. It was not the first time this happened, nor was it the last. Once my money disappeared in Washington, DC and reappeared in a book in a locker in the Dallas airport. But when this happened in Germany, it was disastrous. We were alone in a foreign country with no money. It was late fall, cold. One night we slept in the bushes outside the Frankfurt train station, and I remember the fear when a guard went around the station, shining a flashlight into the bushes.

We ate the powdered soup and bread that remained in our backpacks. By coasting down the mountain pass to preserve gas, we managed to make it to Florence, where we were expecting our final paychecks. Initially American Express would not give us our mail, perhaps because we looked so disreputable. In our tent in the hills above Florence, I put on a suit that my grandmother had bought me in Peck & Pecks in Boston and (Boston culture) I had carried with me all the way. Then I went back to American Express and was able to get our mail and money.

A few weeks later, while we were camping on a beach on the Italian coast, Jim received a draft notice, forwarded from West Virginia to the American Express office.

We did not have the money to buy return tickets. Jim wrote the Army and was told to report to duty as soon as he could. There were no jobs in Italy, so we sold our motorbikes and went back to Germany. First I worked as a maid and then in a cafeteria. Jim drove a forklift. It was winter, but we saved the money to return home by living in a tent on an island in the Rhine. There were other expatriates at that campground. We made friends and told stories around the campfire at night. A British carpenter taught me how to play the guitar.

After basic training in Missouri and Louisiana, Jim, now a Private in the Army, was sent back to Germany, to William O. Darby Kaserne in Fürth. I joined him. I worked for an Army base library and lived in Dürerplatz in the old walled city of Nürnberg, near the home of the artist Albrecht Dürer. We explored the countryside in an ancient Volkswagon, went camping in the Alps and the Riviera, drank beer in outdoor cafes. We were married in Nürnberg in 1968.

I remember my return to Boston because two engines of the airplane failed in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. The plane made it back to England, where they put us up for the night. The next day, we were put back on the same plane.

Colorado, New Mexico, California, Massachusetts -- and Back to California

After his discharge, Jim worked as a micro-electronics and laser engineer. We lived in many places -- following the chip industry. They included Boulder, Colorado, the mountains of Colorado, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Massachusetts, and Northern California.

In Colorado, we lived first in a former pickle factory in Boulder and then in a cabin at 7,000 feet in the mountains where we could see the snow on the Continental Divide from our windows. Under the house was a cistern where water for household tasks was stored. In the winter, water froze on the pump at the spring where we got our drinking water. We plowed the access road ourselves with an old jeep or parked at the foot of the road and skied home up the hill. I studied creative writing at Extension, typed stories on an old typewriter, made art. I also learned to program in FORTRAN, organized technical information, and read technical literature to identify content relevant to research projects for NASA contractor Ball Brothers Research Corporation. At BBRC, I worked with Jose Villarreal, one of the pioneers of Chicano literature, who was BBRC's Technical Publications Supervisor. As a technical information specialist, I ran the BBRC Technical Library.

In 1970 we moved to San Francisco and then in 1971 to Albuquerque, following the micro-electronics industry. From Albuquerque, where our son was born in 1972, we moved to the Massachusetts North Shore -- where we lived while Jim was working in the laser business on Route 128, and I was writing, painting, and exhibiting my work locally.

In Ipswich, a series of accidents befell our young son. He fell off the front steps directly onto a nail that was driven into his forehead. His eyelid got caught on a cabinet knob. I had to first rescue him, which was difficult, and then drive a borrowed Datsun Z that I had never driven to the emergency room 20 miles away.

I fell down the stairs when I was holding him in my arms. I was able to keep from dropping him, but I broke my nose on the banister.

These are only a few of the things that happened. Many were so awful that it is difficult to relate them. In retrospect, I think that they were beyond the realm of co-incidence.

In the seventies, we moved to Sunnyvale, CA and then to Oakland, where Jim and I were divorced. We are still friends. We share a belief in the importance of children and family. We are proud of our son, Sean Langdon Malloy, a professor of history, and our daughter-in-law, a professor of Latino studies, who is Latina/Korean.

California: Writer/Artist/Editor

In the ensuing years, in Berkeley, I developed a series of artists books that combined words and images to create nonsequential narratives. These works that merged visual art and literature were exhibited internationally. They formed the basis for the electronic literature that is now my primary work.

In addition to being an artist, writer, and single parent, I was a Union activist and was instrumental in winning a departmental right to organize victory for AFSCME.

I also continued to work on a series of information art installations and performances that examined R&D and the genetic engineering industry.

In 1993, I began working for Arts Wire, an online communications system for the arts. Eventually, I became Network Coordinator for Arts Wire, and for eight years I edited Arts Wire Current, (that became NYFA Current) an Internet-based National journal on social, economic, philosophical, and political issues affecting the arts and culture, sponsored by The New York Foundation for the Arts. I have also been an Editor for Leonardo and Leonardo Electronic News. A book I conceived and edited on Women, Art & Technology was published by MIT Press. It has been called an essential reference by many reviewers. In 1986, I began writing and programming Uncle Roger, the first online hyperfiction. In 1989, Uncle Roger was mentioned as a new art form for the future in the centennial issue of The Wall Street Journal. (Michael Miller, "A Brave New World: Streams of 1s and 0s", June 1989) Later that year, my hyperfiction its name was Penelope was included in the exhibition Revealing Conversations at the Richmond Art Center. its name was Penelope was published by Eastgate in 1993. As an artist-in-residence at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, I developed Brown House Kitchen, an innovative online narrative.

During this period of my life, I was run down twice.

In Berkeley, at the time that I was union activist and was working on the Super Lucy performances, a station wagon ran into me while I was on a moped and stopped at a stop sign. The bike was crushed. I was thrown to the street and bounced on my head. I saw the wheels of a car about to run me over. I thought I was dead. The people who saw the accident were amazed when I stood up; they also had thought I was dead.

In the ensuing years, while I was working on the OK Genetic Engineering project that asked critical questions about the Genetic Engineering industry, I had severe disc problems and back pain. I remember sitting at my desk crying because the pain was so bad. I almost died from a toxic shock reaction to a myelogram that the Doctor said was the worst he had ever seen.

I also remember, among other things, that the steering wheel on my car caught fire and burst into flames.

Then, on July 9, 1994, while I was working for Arts Wire and as a consultant/artist in residence for Xerox PARC on electronic literature and the document of the future, I was run down on Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona.

My leg was mashed. I had a severed artery, open fractures. (My leg was broken in 13 places.) In the ambulance, they told me they would have to take it off, but in the prison hospital where I was taken, they put it back together with extensive rods, pins, skin and muscle grafts and an arterial bypass.

The hardware began to break the following year. First it was a pin that had to be replaced. And then another pin broke, and the rod slipped painfully into my ankle and had to be replaced.

At about the time Viennese-born actress/inventor Hedy Lamarr died unexpectedly -- January, 2000 -- to take a break from working on a story on low power radio for Arts Wire Current, I went out to get a candy bar. I fell on a hill near where I live. The bottom of my femur sheared off and fell into my knee cap. It was dark. For quite a while no one came when I called, and I had to drag myself up the hill with a broken leg. In the hospital, I had to wait two days on morphine because no one on duty at the time could operate on my leg. The surgery was difficult because my leg was already such a mess

It would be nice if this part of my story ended when I was optimistic about getting some of my life back, when in late 2004, I even went cross country skiing for the first time since the original accident in 1994.

But on January 13, 2005, a few weeks after finishing the first draft of Revelations of Secret Surveillance, I took a very minor fall while cross country skiing near Donner Pass. The following day when I was out walking, I began to experience very severe pain. I found out that there was a bone chip in a tendon in my knee, and that it was possible that one of the rods in my leg was protruding a small amount into my knee

cavity. Surgery was not recommended because of the complexity of the situation. I experienced severe waves of pain for 3 or 4 months.

I now have to use crutches more frequently. (and a cane on good days) But I still enjoy walking in the hills near my home. I would like to go hiking in the mountains and to glide across the snow again on skis.

As always, I explore the creation of literature on computer systems, and I write about the lives of artists

 (biography 1)(biography 2)

Judy Malloy, My biography, 2/12/2008. http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy/mybio.html