Sanctuary/In a Glade
Julia Rymer
About Julia Rymer
I am a multi-faceted artist, art educator and entrepreneur based in the Denver, Colorado area. Working in mixed media abstract painting and fiber art techniques, my work utilizes color, expressive marks and elemental forms to illuminate my emotional experience of the natural world. These paintings and fiber art pieces bring together the emotional and physical world, bathing viewers in an aesthetic experience and asking them to ponder their own relationship to nature’s cycles and sense of time. I further embed personal rituals and historical and mythological components into my artistic process and completed works. My 20+ year art career spans numerous solo and group exhibitions and inclusion in many corporate, museum and private collections throughout the United States. I hold an MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute, and a BFA in Painting from the University of Denver. A long-time art educator, I have taught at numerous colleges, universities and arts institutions, and am a current faculty member at the Curtis Center for the Arts in Greenwood Village, CO.
About Sanctuary/In a Glade
“Sanctuary/In a Glade,” explores the cycles of nature, the sense of time coming round and repeating. In Jewish practice, the natural world is a guide for the year, taking us through rainy seasons and dry weather, planting and harvest. Birth and death, growth and decay, effort and rest, echo through our literature, stories and traditions. The impetus for this work began with reading Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, “The Sabbath.” I was struck by his statement that Judaism “teaches us to be attached to holiness in time,” that “the meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space.” The Shmita year is, likewise, a time of great rest, of allowing the land to simply be. During this time, we refrain from manipulating or managing it, and in that time, the land becomes a sanctuary for us. The pressures of production, manufacture, speed and economics cease, and we, in turn, breathe again. As such this work is restful, peaceful and unencumbered by the vagaries of our fast-paced digital world. It is hand-made, slowly, and is installed in such a way as to encourage the viewer to slow down and find a place of sanctuary.My intention is to create visual rest. The piece does not require overt interaction or engagement. The viewer can simply exist in sanctuary with it, as they would in a glade of trees. This installation of comprised of multiple panels, created with botanical eco-prints of plants with hand-embroidery, ink painting and found leaves on raw silk mounted on linen, suspended from the ceiling.
