Judy Tallwing McCarthy did not seek the spotlight, choosing instead to build durable foundations. Through quiet, deliberate stewardship, she secured women’s place in Leather leadership and preserved culture through structure, memory, and integrity. Her work emphasized continuity over trend, ensuring that leadership, history, and tradition were supported by careful documentation and principled guardianship.

Apache Elder Judy Tallwing is the daughter of Ruby Browning and the granddaughter of Annie Oma and Archer Donoho. Of Apache, Tewa, and African descent, she was raised in a desert encampment at the foot of the Arizona’s Bradshaw Mountains. Reared to become her clan’s matriarch, and trained in medicine by her grandmother, Judy has vivid early childhood memories of living in the desert with her extended family. Her memories include helping to hunt rattlesnakes and making art. “We didn’t call it art, we called it making things to sell along the road to help the family survive. I love trying to bring the stories I’ve heard to life. Each thing that lives on the earth has its own energy, and I try to put those energies together to create healing.”

Judy travels to power places on the earth to collect tiny fragments to energize her painting and sculpture. Her works are meticulous, and charged with the energy of elements such as copper, silver, turquoise, garnet, ashes, diamond dust, and minute crystal prayer beads.

Her works are included in the collections of The American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, and The Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2014, she was invited as Artist-in-Residence at the Halles St. Pierre Museum in Paris, France.

“Each thing that lives on the earth has its own energy, and I try to put those energies together to create healing.”