Julie Maren

Region: West

Website: http://juliemaren.com

City / State: Boulder, CO

 I work in several artistic disciplines and enjoy blurring the boundaries of painting, collage, tapestry, and sculpture. My process involves multiple iterations of creation and destruction. I begin by making work that combines painted imagery, thrifted textiles, and recycled sisal, which I cut up and reconfigure, then repeat the process several times to create something wholly new. The new creations are meditations on the growth and decomposition of natural systems, including the human body. The physical acts of perforating my canvases and unraveling the sisal allow the work to simultaneously breathe and feel more alive and also to respond to my physical body. Curiously, at the same time that I started cutting holes in my work, I was diagnosed with a rare eye disease that causes holes in my retina. This condition has quite literally given me a unique lens through which to perceive the world, and it ultimately allows me to transform my deteriorated vision into new creations.