PATTERNS AND TONES

  Opening night for my solo exhibition "Patterns and Tones for A Paper Ballet"  on  Saturday June 21, 2025 was well received indeed. Friends and family came from far and wide to help me celebrate three bodies of work which cohesively came together in one exhibition. I was delighted to see members of the Kipaipai and Shoebox art community, as well as gallery owners, collectors and art critics. It was truly a memorable evening. Please click on this link to see footage from opening night! Aria Gannon  From 5 - 9pm, the room was buzzing with various conversations about my process, the materials used and how it all fit into our current cultural and political climate.  As an added bonus, Grier Cooper (the ballarina featured in "A Paper Ballet") graced us in a paper costume as she glided effortlessly across the floor.   If you were unable to attend, please enjoy this footage of the opening captured by Eric Swenson here . Grier Cooper  "Patterns a...

50 artists at Keystone Art Space will be opening their studios to the public next Saturday! It has always been enlightening for me to have people walk through a rather private space of creation. It never fails to inspire and excite me to see how others react to new work in progress. After the Altadena fires in January, I found myself gravitating towards crafting colorful paper collages which have brought beauty back into my world in the midst of chaos. In February, a friend of mine asked me to design a few backdrops for a play she was writing about Women in Science.  Abstract investigations of outer and inner space led me to more natural structures, some of which can be seen on my website . For the past 3 months, I have literaly jumped out of bed and headed straight to the studio to paint large pieces of paper in gouache. The physical act of cutting and gluing them into scenes from the desert of Morongo Valley or fashioning them into small vignettes of plants or flowers has become ...

Keystone Art Space  OPEN STUDIOS  Saturday November 2, 2024 4pm - 9pm Keystone Art Space Open Studios is a unique experience for art lovers and collectors of all levels to engage and connect with emerging and established artists in Los Angeles. Keystone artists welcome visitors into their workspaces to get a behind-the-scenes look into the creative process and purchase works directly from the artist.  Always vibrant and fun, guests are encouraged to wander the halls, personally interact with artists in their studios, mingle with other art enthusiasts, and enjoy the works skillfully produced every day at this fine arts complex. Keystone Art Space has over 50 artist studios featuring painting, illustration, printmaking, jewelry, photography, sculpture and more. Don't miss this opportunity to explore the studios and connect with our talented artists.  Keystone Art Space is located at 338 South Avenue 16 Los Angeles, CA 90031 For more information go to  http://www.k...

  “Hummock Pond”    In mid-July, I began my Artist Residency at The Nantuckt Island School of Design and The Art . It was everything I was hoping it would be. From the moment I got there, the island's disctinctive character with it's weathered grey shingle style architecture and seaside vibe, I began to relax into its overwhelming beauty. Thirty miles out to sea with a history going back to the 1700's, it gave me the opportunity to dive headlong into long stretches of looking, painting and enjoying its abundance.  “Reyes Pond”   The staff at NISDA were incredible and truly dedicated to their community. Denese Alen was especially helpful at the Seaview Farm and Art Center Studios, while Ann Conway kindly assisted me at the Wauwinet residency. The long barn was filled with activities in clay, and between exhibitions, lectures and an incredible performance by the Native American intertribal dance troupe Indigenous Enterprise , there was an abundance of activi...

    Over the past several months, I've been thinking about the wood reliefs I've created over the past year and how I would like to present them in an exhibition space. With their titles cut to a minimalist description and number, I thought perhaps I would put them in the order created. It wasn't until I had placed a framed print from my Paper Ballet series up on my studio wall next to the wood reliefs did I realize what an interesting dialogue it was having with the sculptures. In the back of my mind, these two bodies of work started to coalesce into one cohesive piece but I had yet to verbalize it in writing or discuss it in earnest. "Fleeting Perspectives: A Paper Ballet"   When I attended an artist developement program several weeks ago, that idea started to expand. Nestled in the rolling hills of central California on a lovely ranch called Willow Pond , I attend  Kipaipai  for the first time. Spearheaded by Andi Campognone , this weekend workshop was a plac...

Postcard Test No. 1   My lifelong facination with New England, and specifically Massachusetts, has lead me to my next art adventure. I  applied for and was granted an artist's resendency this July at the Nantucket Island School of Design and The Arts . I'm hoping the residency will help me explore my family history and to bring alive the many stories I've heard about summers on Nantucket.  As opposed to Ellis Island, my family came through Boston. They came from Morsasco , a small hillside town in the Province of Alessandria in the Italian Region of Piedmont, and settled in Cape Cod in 1914.   With such a short week long residency, I dedided to sketch landscapes and boats on postcard paper and send them to friends and family. The goal upon my return is to use these postcard sketches as a jumping point for making a series of 17 x 22"" gouache and graphite paintings. Here is a sample of a postcard sketch I made, inspired by Charles Green Shaw 's "Fi...

  "Abstract White Relief No. 4" 2024             The Lancaster Museum of Art and History have selected 3 of my abstract relief forms for their upcoming 39th Annual All-Media Juried Art Exhibition at MOAH:CEDAR which will be on view to the public from June 1 - July 20, 2024.  There will be a special opening reception at MOAH:CEDAR on Saturday, June 1 from 4PM-6PM.  As in previous years, the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation will consider each of the Best of Exhibition winners for acquisition into the Museum of Art and History’s permanent collection.  Visitors are also encouraged to follow the Lancaster Museum of Art and History and vote for their favorite pieces using #MOAHPeoplesChoice on Instagram and to vote in person up until the week of closing at MOAH:CEDAR. The artwork earning the most votes will be announced at the closing on July 20.   Julie Green May 29, 2024 "Abstract White Relief No. 7" 2024 "Abstract White Re...

It has always been about the light. I was born from the light, from my mother Lucia. I follow the light... It always catches my eye.    It has been quite some time since I last blogged about my artwork. It seems like forever and a day. After my exhibition of my embroidered portraits, "Home as Hat - Flora as Fashion", at the end of 2019, Covid hit a few months later. In the 18 months of isolation that followed, I began to evaluate the trajectory of my creative pursuits. I have always seen myself as a fine art photographer but as I looked at the work I had created over the past decade, I could see that I was yearning to pursue something in a 3 dimensional form. For 34 years I worked primarily with the photographic medium, trying to add something special, something new to the lexicon that had come before me. But the medium felt oversaturated and repetitive. Inspiration had left me longing for something else... During the last months of the 20th and into the first months of the 2...

"Flora as Fashion: Jonathan Mills" 2019 Digital inkjet print and yarn 40 x 40 in. In the final days of stitching the last pieces for the exhibition, this 40 x 40 in digital inkjet print was both a joy and a conundrum. There was no doubt I would fill the piece with the ombre colors echoed in the wisteria vine that Jonathan was wrapped in and intended to fill the shirt with a pattern of it's fragrant flower. But after I had filled in the first line of flowers which were attached to the vine, I sat with the piece for a day and came to the conclusion that the image was complete. Simplicity is not as easy as it appears. Although I desired to fill the shirt in completely, it was obvious to me that just a simple line of flowers hanging from a single vine had created a powerful image that expressed exactly what I had intended to present. Using the French Knot embroidery stitch in yarn was a bit of a challenge. I had to do quite a bit of testing before I could properly...

"Home as Hat: Amanda Quinn Olivar" 2019 Digital inkjet print and yarn 40 x 40 in. This final "hat" was created from one of the first photographs taken for this series. Walking around Beverly Hills, we spied this Tudorbethan style gable,  a subset of the Tudor Revival architecture of the 1930's. Once I began to stitch this piece together in yarn, it was evident to me that a drab brown color of the timbers was not going to pop against the wild shrubbery and couldn't possible compete with the dominant patterns in the incredible coat created by Zandra Rhodes which Amanda had on, so I chose the color red. Amanda, who is currently producing a feature documentary called " Seeing is Believing: Women Direct " and the play & film " Paint Made Flesh ", is also an editor for the online magazine Curator . She recently interviewed me about my work as well as my thoughts on this series. You can read the interview here . I am delighted to ...