Phoenix from the Fire

 

Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, 2025 has been a challenging yet incredibly transformative year. The extreme events of this year happened at a breakneck speed. Right out of the gate, the Eaton Fire tore through our town of Altadena on January 7th, laying waste to over 9,000 structures. Our community was devastated and the impact of this event has reverberated throughout the year.

"Outer Inner Space No. 2" 2025  

I was in a daze for several months trying to piece our life back together and did very little work in my studio. It wasn't until a friend of mine was talking about writing a play about women in science did I feel the urge to get back to thinking about art. I began slowly with 4 works in gouache which literally reignited my passion to create something after the fires. I gave myself the assignment of creating "backdrops" for my friend's yet to be written play.

Thinking about something besides the unending steps one needs to take while being remediated led to a series of collages I call "Outer Inner Space". They opened a door in my soul. They led me down the hall to confront the pain I had just endured and asked me to make a decision on how I would proceed as an artist. I will be expanding on this body of work in 2026 with the idea of bringing these "backdrops" to life in an art performance. 

During this time, I saw two possibilities of moving forward. I could go down a dark path, capturing the devastating events of the Eaton Fire or I could embrace the immense sense of gratitude I had for being alive, for our house escaping the fires relatively unscathed (except for the roof!), and for the outpouring of love and support from our friends, family and community. I decided to dive head first into a world of color, one that would bring joy and hope, creating images that would uplift others during these dark days.

"Checkerboard Mesa" 2025

One thing led to the other and I was on a colorful roll, cutting and pasting my way towards happiness. I turned my attention to creating gouache collages of Zion National Park as another form of gratitude. The park had jump started my journey a few years before, from my 30 year focus specifically on fine art photography towards embracing new mediums. But it was the colors that were pouring out of me that led the way. This path led to creating a body of work of the Southwest, five of which will be shown in an exhibition at The Richard Levy Gallery in February 2026!

"Golden Barrel Cactus No. 4" 2025

I studied the architecture of yucca and cactus in the High Desert and brought them to life in vibrant, flat planes of color. They spoke to me of endurance, even in difficult terrain. Much like the Phoenix, these desert plants represent to me eternal life and the triumph of spirit over adversity. I also began to paint portraits of prickly pears and cholla cactus in vinyl emulsion.

Some of the cactus were crafted from leftover shapes from previous collages. These were some of my favorite pieces, as they freed me from my tight and rigid constructions. It was liberating to see where the shapes and colors wanted me to go.

"A Colorful Conversation" 2025

It was during this period of playing with leftover shapes, that I happened to layout what would eventually turn into an entirely new body of work I call "Landscapes of the Imagination". These symbolic anthropomorphic shapes in triangles and circles led me on a 6 month adventure. I couldn't wait to get to the studio to see where we were going next! It is this body of work that I will continue to expande upon in anticipation of an exhibition of these collages in 2027.

April and May were dedicated to mounting and promoting my solo exhibition "Patterns and Tones for A Paper Ballet" at Keystone Art Gallery. It was originally slated for February but due to the fires and lack of bandwidth, I moved it forward 4 months later where it opened to some pretty great reviews in June.

Feel free to check out the exhibition walkthrough here and my artist talk here!

At the end of July, I was part of a group show dedicated to the fires at The Loft at Liz's on La Brea called "Diverted Destruction". Before I was even invited to be part of the exhibition, during the fires I had saved several large embers I had shot out of the sky with my garden hose, the broken Christmas ornaments I had crushed in my purse the night of the fire and detritus from having our a new roof put on our home in May. Due to their caustic nature, I decided to exhibit them in cloaches. Embers under glass. I also led a free assemblage workshop.

Additional exhibitions this year included a painting in a group show "Many Hands, Many Journeys at the Kahilu Theater Foundation in Waimea, HI, a photographic self portrait from my Norwich Market series in a group show "Self/not Selfie" at the Golden West Collage Art Gallery, 3 paintings in the group show "Let Me Eat Cake, Please" at Shoebox Arts at The Brewery, a photograph from The Mask Series was exhibited in the group show "Lost and Found" at The Los Angeles Center for Photography and a gouche collage in the group show "Beautiful Mutants" in Mark Mothersbaugh's Chinatown gallery MutMuz.

In July, I did a 4 day workshop as a Kipaipai Fellow at the Joshua Tree Institute of Mentalphysics and participated in the Tryst Alternative Art Fair in association with the Torrance Art Museum, then drove out to Arizona and New Mexico in September, and returned to Yucca Valley for a stone carving workshop (!) at The Yucca Valley Materials Lab and 29 Palms for an artist residency at the incredible Desert Dairy in November.

I cannot say where I got this energy from but suffice it to say that it has been the most productive year of my life. The fire tore through our town but unleashed a side of me that didn't look back. All I know is that I continue to be grateful everyday to have the opportunity to create and play and experient in my studio, and to hopefully bring people who come in contact with my artwork some joy.

Julie Green

December 28, 2025

Julie Green, December 28, 2025
Photo by Edith Green