Founder and curator of In/Passing gallery, artist Julia Blume talks about the relationship she shares with the environment that is highlighted in her creations.
As a curator, I love working with artists who find many points of connection between their art and the world they inhabit.
Take us to the beginning of your story. How did your tryst with art begin?
When I was ten, I decided to be a linguist. Thirteen years later, halfway through my PhD, I realized that my secret art projects were actually much better at answering the questions I was interested in. I started my MFA that year. Since then, I moved back to New York, participated in several residencies, showed work in New York, San Francisco, and Arizona, and started my curatorial project: In/Passing.
Tell us about the evolution of your practice over the years.
I started out almost exclusively as a painter, but I would always do weird little sculpture projects on the side, or make installations to surround my paintings. The installation elements ended up taking over – especially once I started working outside more. As I spent more time in deserts and forest environments, I began to feel a deeper kinship with the trees and birds and mushrooms and flowers and other beings that kept appearing in my paintings, and instead of making work about them, I started making work for them. These days, I strive to work with the land as a collaborator. My sculptures, installations, and performances all have some element of that relationship embedded in them.
Fresh Butter Mangrove
What were your biggest learnings and hiccups along the way? Which is the most memorable moment?
It took me a long time to figure out what kind of communities I wanted to be a part of. There is so much pressure on young artists to succeed early on, which can make it hard to figure out which communities bring you joy and make you grow and let you be inquisitive and critical without being stifling. Early on, I was in a few hyper-commercial shows, which was not conducive to my own practice, and it was only once I let go of that pressure to produce work for selling that my work really found its own voice.
I have had the immense fortune of finding some incredible communities since then. The critique group I am a part of – NYC Crit Club, run by Hilary Doyle and Catherine Haggarty – has been the most wonderful and supportive resource as my work has changed over the years. I also don’t think my work would be where it is without the residencies I did through Signal Fire. They facilitate residencies for artists in public lands, and their creativity, support, and commitment really changed and strengthened my relationship to my work and to the lands which inspire it.
In/Passing gallery view
What is the primary role of an artist? How do you describe yourself in the context of challenging people’s perspectives via your work and art?
I think artists are essentially triangulators of experience. We spend all this time reading and experiencing and looking and just being in the world within our own bodies, and then we take from that what is important or salient to us, and offer it as a gift for others to experience. I try to bring together an ecological ethics and a visceral love of logic and language. These are often presented as opposing or incompatible structures, but this has just not been the case for me, and I want to share that possibility and that love.
Environmental Intrusion: Holding, Remembering
How do you balance art and life?
Art is really just a way of approaching life. “Research”, for me, can include sitting under a tree for days, or immersing myself in a river, or reading novels, or books on phenomenology. Granting all those activities the same level of importance has both helped my work to grow and has helped with achieving some sense of work/life balance.
How do you deal with the conceptual difficulty and uncertainty of creating work?
By constantly making new work. I switch between different media and work on many different projects at once, so I can keep the material curiosity going. I also read a lot. Generally I read several books at once, and I tend to dip into whatever topic or mode of writing feels right at the time. Sometimes I get stuck after some time if I haven’t been out amongst trees for a while, so I try to be immersed in wilder areas whenever possible. Community is also so vital. I try to have regular critiques, studio visits, or just meet ups with other artists, and I always feel excited to make new work afterwards.
Mango Stack
How does your audience interact and react to the work you put out into the world?
People tend to respond to the concepts underlying the work, such as our relationship to the land, and the structures that shape perception. I’m thrilled about this, because despite my work being very much in conversation with contemporary art and art history, I don’t love the insularity of “art about art”. This is one of the reasons I have moved away from traditional painting, and more into sculpture, performance, and installation. People have been taught how to read paintings, but there is still that mystery of place that surrounds sculpture and installation, especially if living elements are involved.
Curation has become a large part of my practice since founding In/Passing, and it has been really wonderful to see people’s response to the exhibitions. There is a seemingly endless number of really talented emerging artists, and I’m so grateful to be able to share some of their work with such invested and interested audiences.
Portable Interactive Environment: Monstera Holding
What are you looking for when you look at other artists’ work? Who are your maestros?
I tend to look pretty broadly, but I am most excited by artists who explore deeply and without limitations of medium, form, or concept. Some artists I have been thinking about a lot recently are Ana Mendieta, Mark Dion, Diana Thater, Nairy Baghramian, Rashid Johnson, Lygia Pape, and Deborah Anzinger. But I also get really excited by writing and opera and food and theater. Recently I went to see the Met Opera’s staging of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, and that has been giving me a lot of ideas about immersive worlds and text.
But my most formative experiences have always been in nature. In some alternate world where I could read more about any one of my inspirations, I would ask for the autobiography of a thousand year old Sequoia. Luckily, we can read some of those stories just by being in old growth forests. Hopefully the stories they tell will survive into the coming centuries.
Visitors at an In/Passing gallery event
You have spent time amongst artists in flow, what have you observed?
I think people make the best work when they are less focused on “making work”, and more focused on the things they love, which are integral to the work. As a curator, I love working with artists who find many points of connection between their art and the world they inhabit.
Julia Blume performing “The Snow on the Mountains” on Arizona public lands
What are you working on now? What’s coming next season?
I’m trying to collaborate with the land more. Next year I will spend some time in and around Tucson, working on installations and performances. I’m also working on applying to a few more residencies in different areas with different landscapes, which I’m hoping will broaden my perspective of the land as a collaborator. My curatorial project, In/Passing, will be on hiatus while I’m traveling, but will come back strong with some rigorous shows and surprising events – you can stay tuned for an open call announcement some time in the first part of 2020. Now that this project is a little more established, I’m hoping to work with some more ambitious formats: sprawling, pop-up installations, solo shows, performances, and more.
Before you go – you might like to browse our Artist Interviews. Interviews of artists and outliers on how to be an artist. Contemporary artists on the source of their creative inspiration.
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