Julie Wills

2023-ongoing

Subwalls is a series of constructions for the wall made by arranging cast-off materials from the building trades. I think of these abstract compositions as “paintings,” in the sense that they hang on the wall and condense space into a pictorial composition, though by using latex and pva primer on drywall as my “paint” I fuse painting as an artistic convention with housepainting as it is done in the trades. With these architectural references, I am thinking about what is visible and what is not, what we build and what we take apart.

photos: Vivian Marie Doering

2023

vinyl lettering, graphite drawings on paper, moving blankets, fire suppression sprinkler pipes, copper tubing, denim insulation, wire, buckets and mixed media

solo exhibition at Bloomsburg University’s Gallery at Greenly Center, Bloomsburg PA

.

Clouds Filled to Bursting uses a flood as a metaphor for an overwhelming force, and the night sky as a place of hope for transcendence. Through its allusions to water, it also recognizes Bloomsburg, PA as a community that has endured flooding, and knows how to mop up after a flood.

Layered text invokes the multifaceted terror found in the current news cycle— climate crisis, geopolitical battles, human rights abuses and loss of individual dignities. Some of these text fragments give advice, some demand action, some generate or express fear, some contemplate possibility or hope, some offer shared grief. The amount of news is overwhelming, and trying to parse how it all fits together and what to prioritize is difficult.

Some of the materials, such as fire sprinkler pipe and copper tubing, are used to put water where it is needed— though in the case of fire sprinkler, the tradeoff for its use is a soggy, destructive mess. Others are absorbent and suggest mopping up or catching the flow of water from above. These materials reference the nearly-bursting clouds of the exhibit’s title— clouds so over-full that a deluge is threatened or imminent.

.

this installation incorporates three additional named works:

Words that follow the flood
white vinyl text on white walls

Dark Sky Questions
suggested search queries related to space, armageddon and the end of time as offered by Google’s “People also ask:” feature; graphite on paper, each 8”x8”

The end of the world/ the beginning of something else
Biblical flood narrative, all personal nouns replaced with pronouns we/us/our; vinyl lettering

.

photos: Julie Louisa Hagenbuch

2023
graphite on paper, drywall, concrete rubble, marking paint
15”h x 8”w x 3”d

photos: Vivian Marie Doering

2022

sequence of nine graphite drawings on paper, each 8 in. x 8 in.

2021

birch logs, steel, salt blocks, vinyl text and mixed media

installation at Plain Sight, Washington DC

Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Sweden and the European Union National Institutes of Culture, as part of the exhibition series A Window to Europe Through Literature and Art and the EU’s Europe Readr program.

This installation was created in response to the book Every Other Pine, Every Other Fir by Swedish author Axel Lindén, a text which is in essence a reflection on idealism, its shortcomings and its necessity. Texts intermingled throughout are adapted from Lindén’s writing. Texts on the glass are mine, and read:

You and I will sleep on the forest floor

You and I will protect our ears with cotton and riverbank

You and I will let things be marked for removal

.

photos: Alanna Reeves

two-person exhibition with Brian Hitselberger

Lyndon House Arts Center, Athens, GA

July 24-October 16, 2021

2021

mixed media on paper, abraded sandpaper, thread, stones, hoop

installation view, Something I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You at Lyndon House Arts Center, Athens, GA

76”h x 90”w x 36”d

The swan, widely associated with the far north, is the subject of numerous folk stories. According to one Finnish oral tradition, swans are uniquely capable of passing between the mortal world and the underworld; when dipping their heads below the water’s surface, they see into another plane. The Kalevala, Finland’s traditional epic, features another “swan of the underworld,” whose song is so beautiful a hunter cannot kill it. Jean Sibelius, Finland’s best-known composer, drew upon this story as inspiration for his 1895 orchestral work, Swan of Tuonela. As a “tone poem,” Sibelius’ composition evokes the mood of the story rather than its narrative.

2021

sandpaper, metal rod, guy wire sheaths, string, vinyl lettering and mixed media

installation view, Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You at Lyndon House Arts Center, Athens, GA; dimensions variable

Lightning Field imagines the sky as a conduit, and the elements found within relate to conductivity or protection from an electrical charge. By occupying both the window and the wall, this work invites the viewer to pass through the “field” suggested by its title.

2021

graphite on paper

two framed drawings, each 14” x 14”

2021

vinyl lettering

installation view, Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You at Lyndon House Arts Center, Athens, GA

open edition; dimensions variable

We typically read a list of words from top to bottom, but by calling a list a ladder, its orientation shifts.

2021

graphite on continuous-feed dot matrix paper

92”h x 9”w x 11”d

solo exhibition at Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA 2021

March 17- April 17, 2021

This exhibit, titled ‘Split Void,’ is organized around a question: can longing be divided in half and shared between two entities, or is it merely doubled? Can half the weight of desire be borne by another, thus lightening its load, or by sharing do we only magnify its effects?

The context of Gettysburg College, in a place so significant to the U.S. Civil War, has also shaped my thinking for this exhibit. In essence, a civil war is a body at war with itself, an acknowledged intimacy that cannot be severed without mutual suffering.

2021

mixed media on paper, welded steel, sandpaper, vinyl, tumbleweed, tree branch

installation view at Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA

84”h x 120”w x 90”d

‘Midheaven’ references the Northern and Southern circumpolar stars— constellations which cannot be seen from the opposite magnetic pole. While the moon behaves as a long-distance beacon, intermittently visible from any geographic point, two individuals at opposite poles will never see one another’s overhead stars.

Text lettering spelling the names of Northern constellations spans the top edge, while Southern constellations cross the bottom. As north and south approach a central equatorial band, individual text letters slowly disappear.

2019

digital inkjet prints, vinyl, charcoal, acrylic, flags, theater gels, mason’s line and mixed media

34”h x 54”w

solo exhibition at VisArts, Rockville, MD
June 10- August 9, 2020

welded steel, concrete rubble, vinyl lettering, mixed media

installation/ dimensions variable

A “hundred year flood” refers to the recurrence interval of an extreme yet statistically predictable event. In geographic or real estate terms, this demarcates the high water floodplain at times of most extreme rainfall; residents may not be prepared for such a flood, but it is not without precedent. Rather than a physical occurrence, however, this installation alludes to a swell of events reaching psychic or emotional limits— a surge of emotional intensity that threatens to overwhelm survival.

‘100 Year Flood’ gives visual form to emotional residue, much like the debris left behind when floodwaters abate. A line of vinyl text encircling the gallery perimeter operates as a metaphoric high water line, comprised of words and phrases related to limits, endurance, forbearance and submission. These language fragments can be read from left to right, beginning from any point. Extreme flood is used as a metaphor, with materials arranged as if deposited in place when emotional or psychological floodwaters receded.

While the origins of this exhibit precede the extraordinary events of spring 2020, it was actualized during and in response to extreme cultural unrest. Interrupted geometries and battered structural forms within the installation attest to systemic collapse, accompanied by the inferred possibility of creating something new and beautiful from the wreckage.

2019-2021

peat ash, Polaroid and mixed media on paper

each 8.25” x 11.75”

2019

Temporary installation at Arteles Creative Center, Haukijärvi, Finland

Mixed media wall drawing, vinyl lettering, globe, clock, Le Corbusier chaise, and residency bedroom resembling a monastic cell; language fragments are derived from a scientific textbook of the same title

From a companion text:

‘Astronomy Explained’— its such a confident title for a textbook, so solid in its ability to finalize something so infinitely mysterious and tantalizingly unknowable.

The cosmos is a recurring metaphor in my work. It offers mystery and potential and the chance that even if the laws of physics and social convention are not working in my favor, something else might be. I grapple with competing desires to either learn everything I can about space, or to look instead to astrology. This work pretends to be a diagram, but although the map points are named, I can’t explain anything at all about those points.

I went to a lecture at the college where I teach, a couple of years ago, because I was making this work about the cosmos and the lecture had a sexy title: ‘Dating the Solar System.’ It was presented by an astronomer who was young and bright and a terrible speaker, and who made no effort to spell out anything at all for the lay person. Unable to follow or maintain interest in the substance of her talk, I found myself instead writing down language fragments— words I heard her say but could not understand, and found beautiful or compelling without context. The words in this work operate in a similar way: these phrases are section headings from the book’s table of contents. I’ve culled these for their open-ended metaphors, less interested in learning about the structural phenomena than I am in the possibilities evoked through the language.

2019

mixed media on chalkboard

60”h x 72”w

solo exhibition

C for Courtside, Knoxville, TN
July 5- August 2, 2019

wall text is from The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford:

THERE ARE SO MANY REVOLUTIONS LIGHT YEARS AWAY

2019

pencil drawing on paper, wire, string

2019

digital print on campaign sign

2019

walnut ink on paper

45” x 45”

2019

moving blankets, photograph, clothesline, locator flag

2018

copper pipe, digital inkjet print

36"h x 30"w x 12"d

2019

communications cables, copper wire, ribbon, locator flags

2019

flag poles. plaster, cord, copper pipe, spirit level

2018

paper, thermostat wire, vinyl, cyanotype on dimensional lumber, brass, stick welding rods, copper pipe, utility locator flags, birthday candles, cast concrete, resin, plaster, wax, driveway markers, fire alarm & mixed media

installation at Salisbury University Art Galleries, Salisbury, MD

Installation builds from existing architectural features, including the fire alarm and windows, paired with the redacted names of constellations no longer recognized by modern astronomers. 

2018

charcoal, graphite, string, thread, wire, sandpaper, roofing felt, utility locator flags, record sleeve, matches, thermostat cable, vinyl, theater gels, rubber band, glass beads, mason’s line and various found smashed things on Stonehenge drawing paper

72”h x 100”w

2018

series of cyanotypes on paper, each unique

22”h x 30”w

A work about mutability and change.

2018

digital prints on aluminum

6”h x 40”w each

2018

installation at China Hutch Projects, Chestertown, MD 

vinyl (the names of the 88 modern constellations), four-channel audio & mixed media

Individual letters from the constellation names spill down the walls, slipping into illegibility before disappearing behind the wainscot. The presumed order of the cosmos is thus rendered unintelligible as it enters the domestic space below. A companion audio component, created in collaboration with sound artist Tim Nohe, features my voice played through three speaker exciters attached to a teacup, the radiator, and the china hutch glass, with a fourth track featuring the voice of John Cage audible only through a bone conductor held to the listener's temple.

solo exhibition at MoCA Arlington, Arlington, VA

October 14- December 17, 2017

2017

tire, steel, copper, framed collagraph, electric light

36"h x 55"w x 30"d

2017

utility locator flags & vinyl lettering

dimensions variable

2017

concrete, steel, copper, lightbulbs, hula hoop

72"h x 36"w x 36"d

2017

fuel cans & mixed media

dimensions variable/ reconfigurable

2017

sandpaper

48"h x 72"w on 5"d pedestal

2017

lightbulbs, sandpaper, wood, vinyl lettering

dimensions variable

2017

relief print from roofing felt (edition of two)

30”h x 37”w

2017

vinyl (a running line of prepositions related to proximity, bisecting the architecture of the room)

temporary installation at China Hutch Projects

exhibit at Whittier College Greenleaf Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

October 19- December 1, 2017

collaboration with Cody VanderKaay

collaboration with Cody VanderKaay

2017

collage (die-cut pages from handyman's guide, sandpaper, tracing paper, letters, pencil, thread)

collaboration with Cody VanderKaay

2017

sandpaper, twine, tacks, graphite, artificial lemon

2017

blind cane, tree branch and mixed media

60”l x 33”w x 26”h

--

How do I make trust or faith in what I cannot see visible to the naked eye? In an effort to answer this question, I created Trust Apparatus: a red-and-white striped blind cane with feelers extending outward like whiskers on a cat, alerting it to its own dimensions. A blind cane allows its user to navigate the world in the absence of visual perception, while the cane’s appearance tells others to give its user extra space, aid, or caution, recognizing that the tool is not fully adequate to the need. My modified cane has a tree branch that protrudes at the level of the heart, allowing its user to feel what cannot be seen as the heart bumps against obstacles and opportunities; its striping similarly alerts others to the vulnerability of its user.

solo exhibition at Kohl Gallery, Washington College, Chestertown, MD

September 14- October 22, 2017

2017

paper, roofing felt, charcoal, graphite, ladder, mason's line, cinder block, rope, vinyl, leather, tree branch, paint, feathers, matchsticks, twine, glass beads, fabric, hair, birthday candles, wax, thread, abacus beads, violets, quartz, found objects

118"h x 240"w x 78"d

2015-2017

wire bed spring, cloth, string, tobacco, lace, twine, glass, plastic, film negatives, ceramic, silver fork, violin bow, paper, found objects

54″h x 72″w x 6″d

2017

letterpress print on paper, sandpaper

each 7.5” x 10” 

2017

digital inkjet print, pencil

22”h x 30”w

text reads:
space is a vacuum. nature abhors a vacuum. a hole, a void, an absence, a gate between here and there

2016

driftwood, found coins & domestic debris, party lights, birthday candles, matchsticks, ribbon, cloth, tobacco & twine on linen-covered supports

54"h x 77″l x 11″d

text reads:
wishing on every thing in sight

solo exhibit at Hillyer Art Space, International Art & Artists, Washington, DC

May 5-28, 2017

2017

wood, spray paint, tar paper, vinyl lettering, globe lamp, beeswax and bird wing

24”h x 24”w x 8”d

text reads:
The act of soaring
A swift movement: a flight of the clouds
A set of steps from one landing to the next

2017

tree branch, steel, feather, pins, glass beads

12’l

2017

installation view, Hillyer Art Space, Washington DC

mixed-media collages on paper displayed framed & unframed with shelf, found wire, lightbulbs, vinyl lettering & altered library book

dimensions variable

text on lightbulbs reads:
the world tells me I'm darkness but I know I am light

2017

sandpaper, wood, brass pins, vinyl lettering, carbon transfer paper, petrified wood

12”h x 5.25”w x 3.5”d