McWillie, Judith

Judith McWillie is an artist, author, and professor. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Memphis State University and her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the Ohio State University. She is professor emeritus of drawing and painting at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in Athens, Ga. Much of her work centers on African American artists. As an artist, her paintings and photographs have been in solo and group exhibitions at a variety of locations throughout the United States and Europe, including the Georgia Museum of Art, the New York State Museum, and Rutgers University. She is the author of numerous essays on arts and culture. Her book No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work (2005), co-written with Grey Gundaker, won the Southern Anthropological Society's James Mooney Award.

McWillie, an art historian at the University of Georgia, Athens, researched Southern folk artists Dilmus Hall, Mary T. Smith and J.B. Murry.

Hall was born in North Georgia in 1900. He worked as a waiter and construction worker before retiring in 1961 to devote himself to art. His yard and cinder block house in Athens, Ga. are decorated with sculpted animals, devils, and humans, often based on Biblical themes. He has also produced hundreds of drawings in a cartoon-like style. Mary Tillman Smith (b. 1904) produced art from roofing materials and plywood squares. Murry (also Murray), is from Athens, Ga.