At 58, she's a bit under Joyce Tenneson's age limit, but she has the vibe. She zoomed into Cincinnati in September when the Carl Solway Gallery opened an exhibit of her installations and drawings from the 1980s (continuing through Dec. 24). As she looked at her dynamic work exploding off the gallery walls, she mildly observed, "This seems overly bold to me. I have to ask myself, "What place was I in?"

The art world thinks she was (and is) in a great place. Pfaff pioneered the reappearance of the art of installations in the 1970s, mingling drawing, painting, found objects and sculpture. "It was the 1970s in Soho," she says now. "I had graduated from Yale and didn't want to be a painter. I became involved with the idea of gestures, and moved from two dimensions to three dimensions."

At the Solway Gallery, the signature work is Horro Vacui from 1988. The title says it all - nature abhors a vacuum. It riotously leaps off the wall - everything in it is round and black, white or gray. Painted circles, spheres, balls and plates seem to be swept into mid-air by an invisible juggler.

The MacArthur Foundation hails her for her "continued exploration of how to make painting more three-dimensional and sculpture more painterly."

These days, says Pfaff, she "works slower." Her biggest project at the moment is building a studio onto her Victorian house in New York's Hudson Valley, and the architectural garden adjacent to it.

Judy Pfaff: Installations and drawings from the 1980s, through Dec. 24, Carl Solway Gallery, 424 Findlay St., West End, (513) 621-0069 and www.solwaygallery.com.

Jackie Demaline