Judy Chicago’s Atmospheres and Smoke Sculpture series, first ignited in the late 1960s, still hang in the air as one of her most recognizable and influential bodies of work.
In the series, Chicago (photographed above by Donald Woodman) executed a series of increasingly complex fireworks pieces that involved site specific performances around California. These works were intended to transform and soften the landscape, introducing a feminine impulse into the environment.
With her new edition, Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026, Chicago extends this legacy, while also reflecting, and reflecting upon, a deeply personal moment.
Judy Chicago - Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026 © Chicago Woodman LLC, Judy Chicago/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; photography by Garrett Carroll
“For my 75th birthday, I staged a “Smoke Sculpture” titled A Birthday Bouquet for Belen. I decided to symbolize the richness of my life through a spectrum of colored smokes that filled the sky with swirling hues,” Chicago tells Artspace, in an interview to mark the launch of the edition.
Within the image, plumes of saturated color rise from the ground and expand into soft clouds of blue, orange, pink, and yellow. The composition feels at once grounded, playful, and immersive.
As Chicago has described, she has come to see these works as “painting the sky,” where “the colored plumes rise into the air and fuse with the light to create colors that can’t be achieved any other way.”
Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026 is an archival inkjet print with screenprint and flocking on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth paper, measuring 22 x 36 inches. The edition features two layers of screenprint, finished with subtle glitter elements that enhance the vibrant colors.
Judy Chicago - Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026 © Chicago Woodman LLC, Judy Chicago/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; photography by Garrett Carroll
Produced in a limited run of just 25, exclusively for Artspace, it offers a rare opportunity to collect a new work by one of the world’s most legendary contemporary artists. Proceeds from the sale of Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026 benefit the Ali Forney Center, supporting LGBTQ+ youth with housing.
Created to mark the publication of the Monacelli book, Rainbow Dreams: Color and Light in Contemporary Art, this print reflects the same sense of wonder and visual delight that defines the book – a celebration of color in its most expressive forms. Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026 is the first in a series of three editions released in the coming months in conjunction with the publication of Rainbow Dreams.
Chicago is a pioneer of feminist art, renowned for her groundbreaking work exploring gender, identity, and social history. Best known for The Dinner Party (1974-79), an iconic installation celebrating women’s achievements throughout history, her practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, and education.
Her work challenges traditional art hierarchies and amplifies marginalized voices, combining rigorous research with bold, symbolic imagery. Beyond her artistic output, Chicago has been a transformative teacher and author, shaping generations of artists and advancing the discourse on feminism and the arts.
To mark the launch of this very special edition we asked her some questions about the edition, about Rainbow Dreams: Color and Light in Contemporary Art, and about her wider practice.
Judy Chicago - photographed with Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026 by Donald Woodman
Can you tell us about the original image this edition springs from, and why you chose it for an edition now? For my 75th birthday, I staged a Smoke Sculpture titled A Birthday Bouquet in the street outside our house and studio spaces in Belen, New Mexico, the small town where we (Chicago and her photographer husband, Donald Woodman) have lived and worked for 30 years.
Given that I had lived a good amount of time by then and had had a myriad of experiences, I decided to symbolize the richness of my life through a spectrum of colored smokes that filled the sky with swirling hues to a delighted local audience that also included people who had flown in from around the country to celebrate with us. As it is a little-known (but personally meaningful) work, I thought it would be interesting to share it as an edition now.
What is the specific thing about the image that makes it right for this moment? As the book focuses on the rainbow and this piece incorporates a full spectrum of colors, I thought it would be the perfect image as it conjures up joy, hope and is celebratory in nature at a rather bleak time in our country's history, a time when hope is rare. All the more reason to offer hope which is a Jewish mandate; 'Choose Hope,' which is what I've tried to do throughout my career.
Judy Chicago - photographed with Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026 and the Rainbow Dreams book by Donald Woodman
Rainbow Dreams is a celebration of artists who use color and light to create symbols of optimism, resilience, and community, what do color and light mean to you and how do you seek to control or work with them? In the late 1960's, I took up a focused study of color as I was interested in connecting it to emotive states, something that shaped my practice from then on.
Curiously, when I was writing a book on Frida Kahlo, an artist I thought I had little in common with, with the British art historian, Frances Borzello, I discovered a page in one of her journals ascribing certain emotions to particular hues, the only other artist I've ever known who had done that.
In terms of my Atmospheres and Smoke Sculptures (of which I've done more than 50 over the course of my career), my original intention was to soften or 'feminize' the man-made environment. More recently, I've viewed them as “painting the sky,” but in all of them, the colored plumes rise into the air and fuse with the light to create colors that can't be achieved any other way.
What is your process for picking the colors you use in your work, is this choice related to an experience or memory of color as a child, and are there colors you find yourself drawn to? When I was in graduate school at UCLA and during my first decade of professional practice in L.A., my male professors and the male gate keepers of the art scene HATED my sense of color, which always involved an affinity for ivories, pinks, turquoises and purples and as I mentioned, spectral color.
It might be that one day, an enterprising young art historian will look to Seurat's Grand Jatte, Monet's Haystacks, and Toulouse Lautrec's use of reds - all of which I studied intently in the Impressionist galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago where I began studying art when I was five - and realize that my color sense was profoundly influenced by them, especially by Seurat's use of color opposites.
Judy Chicago - photographed with Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026 and the Rainbow Dreams book by Donald Woodman
What’s the feeling you’d like people to get from the edition, and is there a response you’ve had to your work over the course of your career that you’ve been surprised by? I'd like to take the last question first because, in my opinion, the answer is so amusing. Someone once commented about Through the Flower, a landmark image of mine, asking if I knew the image turned when one looked at it. I burst out laughing and said: Yes, I made it do that.
As to this print, I hope that viewers enjoy a moment of hope and joy which - as I said - is in short supply these days. One of the things I enjoyed about the Monacelli book was the exuberance of the color in so many of the images. I didn't actually realize that so many other artists had explored the rainbow, so it was a nice discovery and very affirming of my own color sense, especially given all the negativity it has engendered. In fact, even in 2012, when the Getty's Pacific Standard Time show opened, one of my male colleagues objected to the inclusion of one of my Flesh Garden paintings because it was 'too emotive and feminine'.
Take a closer look at Birthday Bouquet for Belen, 2026.
