Julie Wills

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Artist Statement

My work is inspired by the tools of desire: wishes, hopes, pleas for divine or cosmic intercession, and superstitious rites. These are the things we turn to when something is desperately wanted but cannot be achieved through hard work or other rational means. My most recent works invoke the creation of something unknown, and good, from the remains of dreams that have broken. I plan my works— whether on paper or three-dimensional— as line, mass and color in space, and I am as interested in the gulfs and voids between materials as I am in the marks themselves. I choose materials for their metaphoric or associative meanings; sandpaper, for example, contains a tactile recognition of its erosive function while thermostat wire suggests the activation or transmission of heat. Much of my recent work incorporates a longstanding interest in text, signification, legibility and poetic language. I frequently draw imagery from celestial sources. The moon, stars and cosmos recur throughout in varying forms: the distant reaches of an infinite cosmos strain to reach their other halves. Individual stars fall from the sky, disrupting the known order of the universe. Through this imagery I explore constancy and mutability, current conditions, and hope for an unrealized but longed-for future.

www.juliewills.com