When BFA Fine Arts faculty member Judith Solodkin first met the artist Louise Bourgeois, with whom she would go on to have a long, productive collaboration, it was as a neighbor. It was the mid-1970s, and Solodkin had recently moved to Manhattan from New Mexico, where she had earned the distinction of being the first woman to complete the master printer program at the Tamarind Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to fine art lithography.

“I would see her pushing her shopping cart, full of art supplies, down the street to her house,” Solodkin says. “So I introduced myself. We were both involved with the local feminist movement, and we became friends.”

Eventually the two began collaborating, with Bourgeois providing drawings and Solodkin turning out faithful lithograph editions of them, a harder task than it might seem to be. Lithography is the most demanding of the traditional printmaking techniques, involving a multipart process that uses the incompatibility of oil and water, rather than etched or carved or perforated surfaces, to make its images. And Bourgeois was a merciless critic. “At the beginning I would bring her proofs and she would just tear them up,” Solodkin says. “She could be very difficult to work with.”

Bourgeois became just one of several notable artists to work with Solodkin’s SOLO Impression printing business—the list includes Francoise Gilot, Maya Lin and Jean Shin—but she was likely the most consequential of them: Solodkin's work on creating an edition of Ode à l’Oubli, Bourgeois’ 2002 book of fabrics and stitch work, helped to establish SOLO in the nascent field of digital embroidery art. Today, Solodkin not only works on embroidery projects with artists like Kent Henricksen and Elaine Reichek, she also teaches the techniques to undergraduate and continuing education students at SVA.

With Ode à l’Oubli among the many works included in “Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait,” an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, on view through January 28, 2018, Solodkin recently took time to answer a few questions about her work and friendship with the artist.

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