We are huge fans of your work, Julie! For those that are just learning about you and your work, could you please give us an overview of your process? How do you go about making your images? And how does this print fit into the rest of your body of work?

Aw thank you so much!! Back atcha - I’m a huge fan of Flash Flood. So for those just learning about me and my work, I’d say I’m primarily an installation artist who combines my background in painting, theater and film. I make about 3 room-size installations a year using cardboard, wood, paint, paper, and found objects. In between installations, I make lots of smaller drawings, clay pieces, and collages. The smaller works help me figure out color and shape relationships on a more manageable (and storeable) scale. Ideas worked out in the smaller pieces are then incorporated into future installations. One of the things I’m really crazy about is lowtech facsimile and reproduction. I use lots of photocopies in my work and I usually work in series of 20-50 pieces that all use the same format, set of symbols, materials and color palette. That’s part of why it’s been so cool to see my work translated into a print! Like the screen print, which is a translation of a sculptural collage, I’m also really into flattened space and arranging 2-dimensional objects in 3-dimensional space, a lot like a theater set.

Your work oozes joy and gives us the celebratory feelings that we wish we could indulge in during these pandemic times. We’d honestly love to live in one of your site specific installations right now! Can you tell us more about those installations? What are they inspired by and what do you hope the viewer gets out of it? How do you treat the installations differently than your 2d work?

I’m right there with you. I’d also like to live in one of my spaces right about now! So my installations are created exactly the same way my smaller works are, just on a lifesize scale. That’s why working out the shapes and palette are important before spending a lot of time scaling up and committing. I work intuitively and in response to the architectural features of each space. It’s an additive process in that I’m making each element one by one, arranging it, and responding to it with the next move. I think of my installations as private performances in which the viewer sees the end results of my intuitive choices. There’s always the suggestion of people through familiar household objects and decorations, but I never include the figure. It’s like a set for a play that just ended or will never premier. My first few installations, about 15 years ago, were heavily influenced by the artist Jessica Stockholder who also works with household items and large bright sections of paint. But as I’ve become more myself in the process, I’ve developed a personal language of recognizable symbols and started using lots of elements that reference party decorations. Because my installations are temporary and site-specific, the party flourishes refer to a similar experience of spending loads of time, planning and effort to create a festive space that distracts guests from their everyday worries, only to have it all come down the next day. What I hope the viewer gets is the sense that they’re approaching a human-size three-dimensional painting that upon closer inspection reveals lots of little moments of humor, darkness, weirdsies, and joy. I want the work to be both aesthetically pleasing and psychological.

The color palette you use is very sharply honed. It’s joyous, bold, and delicate all at the same time. Can you speak to the importance and power of color in your work? Which comes first – color or form?

Color is so important in my work! I’m not a super patient person, so I tend to like to work with really immediate materials like colored pencils, colored papers, duct tapes, and markers. I’ll mix some paint if I have to, but I prefer going to the hardware store and selecting by comparing swatches. I think my palette comes from my childhood. I was a child of the 80s and 90s, so the homes I spent time in usually had wallpapers, furniture, draperies, and paint from multiple eras - 1950s-1990s. Hanging out on floral couches covered in plastic surrounded by doilies and lace and muted institutional colors in my grandparent’s home while wearing the hot pinks and wild jazzy patterns of the 1980s and 90s. Our kitchen had those yellow ochre appliances and faux brick linoleum. I love to put muted colors and textures next to really hot shiny unnatural colors and surfaces. I guess my love of color ties in with my need to communicate a sensory experience.

We love the way that you utilize everyday household and office materials to bring to life your vision. Could you talk a bit about your exploration and path of discovering your process using these materials.

Sure! I’m sort of allergic to elitism in the art world and part of my reaction is to turn away from time-honored traditional materials. I don’t like the pressure of trying to make the perfect oil painting. I’d rather be scrappy and make-do with ordinary accessible materials. I love shopping at office supply and hardware stores and trying to find alternative uses for the things they carry. So much color, texture, and order! I use household imagery, office supplies and building materials to play with nostalgia for home and the repetitious part of what it means to be alive - all the things we do over and over to keep ourselves and our spaces clean and orderly. I remember an ah-ha moment I had when I was about 30 and I realized there were things - sometimes annoying things, sometimes meditative things - that I’d have to do forever, for the rest of my life, everyday, and that I could decide how well or often I’d like to do those things. As far as my path of discovering my process for using materials goes, I grew up in a house where we sewed, drew, and generally just made lots of things by hand with what we had laying around. I’m also brought back to the elaborate HEAVILY sequined ballet costumes my mom would sew for me as a kid. I love the idea of having a set of materials and a pattern to interpret into a customized costume that varied slightly from dancer to dancer.

Collaboration is a big part of our work in the studio. We know that you have a component in your partner, Andy Arkley’s installation at ahha’s newest iteration of the Experience. How often do you two collaborate? Can you tell us more about working together and how it enriches your solo practice?

Actually, I’m not the BEST collaborator haha. I have some pretty specific ideas about how to do things and what to use, but yes, Andy and I collaborate sometimes and we help each other with our projects and careers. Sometimes it looks like me helping to drywall a project space for Andy; sometimes it looks like Andy designing a pdf for one of my proposals. Andy is an amazing airbrusher, designer, animator, builder, tech person with an engineering/math brain that I just don’t have. I’m a good editor, colorist, and materials person with fine motor skills from my time as an artist assistant back in Seattle. It’s awesome to be able to help each other out where we need it. The mini-installation I have at AHHA as part of The Experience was an invitation from Andy (thank you!) to create something for an unused space within his installation. It was really fun to make a 5x5x2 ft installation behind plexi using all my usual tricks. I never work at that scale. Our upcoming project, Jumble, opens October 16th at Science Museum Oklahoma for one year. It’s a 50x12 ft interactive wood, music and animation piece that kids will be able to control at 16 consoles. We’ve cut over 70 shapes out of wood that will be suspended with animations projected onto their surfaces. Andy has animated my handmade patterns and written a new song for it. I’m so excited to see kids play with it! Working together is both wonderful and challenging. I’m so used to quietly slogging away alone in my studio, that it’s an adjustment to be in conversation all day and not to be able to call all the shots :) That said, I’m always so proud of and amazed by what we can do when we work together. Our collaborations always give me a new perspective into my work and its possibilities and hopefully Andy feels the same.