ARTIST RECEPTION: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 5-7PM
Julia Salinger is a visual artist, poet, printmaker, playwright, performer and actor. My visual work and my writing aim to create an external balance, in which to satisfy the two. The outer concrete reality with the inner fantasy life. The micro, the marrow of objects is what I wish to explore. It
becomes the skeletal framework, on which I can suspend lines, color, texture, words, shapes, thought,feelings and letters and express the space in between order and chaos.
For Salinger, combination of text and visual has been a natural thought process, interchangeable, one in thesame. As in her poem, “Broken Bits.”
I could always come back to you
In those dreams undreamt
Black hatted scavengers
Pluck the bones from sidewalk’s broken bits
Talons scratch into splintered rubble
Release urban treasures
But I want to remember you not underfoot
But asleep inside the coral tissues
when cells fold into one another
To create a false self
Otherwise known as a copycat
One by one enter into the velvet midnight interior
The prehistoric blossom sprayed pale yellow
In the catacombs outside Palermo In 1979
Disabled tendrils strained
Bittersweet wash of the persimmon
Depleted IV of the day
Tease the spaces of involvement
Sometimes the tea tastes like simmered meat
in a warm bath, an occasional gurgle
The raw earthy sludge
Of an odd cut
Writing in the rain
Makes me swallow my words
Do instructions have an expiration?
"My imagination loves the details. As a child, I remember drawing the buds of a tree at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. I can still feel my pencil carving out all the distinguishing marks. When I draw, it is a direct line from the heart to the paper. There are no fillers, no “New and Improved,” just pure immediate gesture. I learned early on to closely examine both objects and people."
She is interested in the insides of things, the true essence in all its raw appeal. Maybe this stems from her father, who was a doctor, and her interest in looking at the illustrations in his medical books.
"My work is my internal poetry, a record of my interior and exterior life."
I began as an art historian under my mentor, Irving Sandler, who wrote “The Triumph of American Painting. I continued my studies at Columbia University and worked for Ronald Feldman Fine Arts as a researcher for five Andy Warhol print portfolios. During this period, I was accepted into the prestigious curatorial program at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.. I have also worked at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design, The Guggenheim, The Neuberger Museum and the Whitney.
In 2001, I began to focus solely on my artwork, after working in the music business for seventeen years. I have shown at Julie Heller in Provincetown and the Cherrystone Gallery in Wellfleet. My work is in collections in the U.S., Europe and Asia. I have been represented by Farm project space in Wellfleet, MA.
