Julie Alland
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Introductory / Umbrella Statement


My studio practice involves investigating the physical properties of materials. This exploration results in work that connects process and concept. Certain themes and ideas preoccupy me and, like a musician, I explore these motifs repeatedly with different instruments, styles and tonalities.

Selected Themes, Concepts & Preoccupations

Paradoxes
  • Unified opposites. For example:
    perfect imperfection, ordered randomness, visible invisibility, preserved destruction.
  • Appreciating beneficial accidents and blemishes such as:
    decay, bubbles, devitrification and chemical reactions.
  • The creative liberation achieved by imposing limitations on materials & working methods.

Disclosure
  • Revealing secrets and what lurks below the surface.
  • Substantiating the Invisible (for example: air, magnetism and time).
  • Portraying things that are too slow, small, distant or inaccessible to see.

Mortality
  • Memory
  • Capturing fleeting moments
  • Celebrating the ordinary

Intersection of the Arts and Sciences
  • Studio as research lab:
    documenting experimentation. Bringing a visual and conceptual work of art to realization by experimenting with materials and/or the opposite: experimenting with materials resulting in a conceptual work of art.
  • Observing natural forces, human behavior and their interactions with objects and environments:
    artist as cultural anthropologist. Choosing materials and subject matter because of how humans relate to them on an every-day level and using natural forces as tools (for example: sunlight and magnetism).
  • Systems of logic and organization, archiving and/or distributing information, specimen display.
    For example: studying, collecting and/or creating similar things whose differences become apparent only when grouped together (as in a field guide or museum display) so that one can compare them to each other.

Experimenting and Collaborating With Tools and Materials, by:
  • Trying to stay in control while paradoxically also allowing them to surprise me.
  • Using unusual substances and techniques.
  • Achieving results influenced by how they react to each other and my involvement with them.

On a personal level, my art is about treating limitations as strengths, being in the moment and quieting my mind. My work serves as a catalyst for facing fear and forms a bridge by transforming my tendency for introversion into connection with others.

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Julie Alland and may not be reproduced without permission.