Julia Samuels was born in Portsmouth, NH and earned her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2007. Julia contributed to building and managing The Gowanus Studio Space and also volunteered during the formative years of 596 Acres, an agency that helps neighbors gain access to vacant land in their communities. She earned her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2015 and has since founded Overpass Projects, based in Providence, RI. As master printer and director of Overpass Projects, Julia publishes and prints her own work as well as collaborative printmaking with other artists, bridging barriers between artistic disciplines and promoting cross-pollination between techniques. Julia’s work is in the permanent collections of RISD Museum, Davison Art Center, Library of Congress. Her publishing work as master printmaker is at Detroit Institute of Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, Princeton University Museum of Art, Ford Foundation, NYU Langone collection, Benton Museum of Art, Chazen Museum of Art, Spencer Art Museum, Allen Memorial Art Museum and others. Julia’s work is currently available at WaterFire Arts Center shop as well as her website, overpassprojects.com
Statement: Relief printing has been my primary medium for the last ten years. Woodcuts and linocuts are imbued with a deep sense of social democracy and are uniquely accessible and direct. Without specific chemistry of tons of equipment, anyone can carve, and what you carve is what you get.
The unifying goal of my portfolio is to broadly talk about conjunction and dissonance between human progress, development, and the natural world’s commitment to persevere under the unyielding onslaught of progress. I find inspiration from the most ubiquitous aspects of our daily lives. A simple walk around the block and I am flooded with inspiration, weeds poking through the pavement, ivies tagged around a crooked chainlink fence, morning glories creeping up a telephone poll, and on and on.
Intricacy and beauty can be found anywhere, and I see art every where I go: at every traffic stop or speeding by on the highway, in the whole built up world around us, and in every interaction where the natural world is attempting to reclaim its space. Power lines, phone cables, and chain-link and barbed wire fences are things we all encounter on a daily basis and mostly likely do not consider beautiful. I appreciate these elements for the challenges they bring to the medium of woodcut. Cables and wires silhouetted against a clear sky are elements positively drawn over deep negative space, and in carving I invert this relationship, investing my effort into the areas carved away, the blank spaces. My discipline and care is leaving behind and untouched the intention of the original artwork, that fence, cable, tree or vine that exists in the real world.
Contact: julia@overpassprojects.com
