I now have a blog specifically for my work in comics and 'zines! It's called Lamprey Latitudes, and I will post pics about how I am getting along with my graphic novella-in-progress, Up the River. Please visit lampreylatitudes.blogspot.com.

Recently I printed a very-limited edition 'zine version of The Somnambulist, an excerpt from my graphic novella, and tabled at the SF 23rd Annual 'Zine Festival, which was super fun. Thanks to those who bought and traded and chatted about how important independent printed matter is in this age of misinformation.

I have a few copies left, and if you want one, please come by my Mendenhall Studio in Eureka's Cultural Arts District. I'm open by appointment, and occasionally, during Arts Alive. Otherwise, you can buy my 'zine, Up the River at the following independent bookstores:

Floating World Comics in Portland, OR. in the Lloyd Center. Awesome store and super-helpful staff!
Words and Pictures Eisner Award-winning, women-owned, bookstore in Portland.
Dandar's A cool family-owned shop selling games, tarot decks, and books, Arcata, CA.

It's SUMMERTIME, it's September 1st, 2024, and I'm tabling at the SF Zine Festival with my VERY limited edition comic, Up the River. Please stop by - it is a fun, free, and community-oriented event, sponsored by The Intersection for the Arts. Taking place at San Francisco's Metreon Center, peruse hundreds of unique, independently created 'zines and printables, participate in a hands-on arts workshop or attend presentations, such as "Power of Print in the Age of Misinformation" and Q&A with Guest of Honor Eddie Ahn - you should check out his graphic novel, Advocate! Masks are required.

www.sfzinefest.org

If you can't attend, please reach out if you'd like a copy of Up the River. If you are visiting the Humboldt Bay Area, you can get one at the Mendenhall Arts Studios in Eureka's Cultural Arts District, while they last. I usually open my studio with the yellow door on Arts Alive, which happens every First Saturday evening of the month! I am also open by appointment.

To see/purchase some of the art from Up the River, visit The Ink People Center for the Arts waterfront gallery space, during the month of September, with an exhibition by local artists in celebration of Eureka's Cultural Arts District!

www.inkpeople.org

Hyperallergic magazine is featuring Jules' studio in it's View From the Easel column, for the August 31, 2023 issue, along with other artists across the nation...Thank you Hyperallergic Magazine Staff writers!

Image: a riso-print pulled at The Ink People Art Lab, that includes my ink-drawn logo layered over my photo of the native Pearly Everlasting. This lovely wild plant blooms in late summer in my garden. And why did I choose the Pacific Lamprey as the subject for this artwork?

Teaching art workshops in prison over the past ten years, I'd become 'hyper-aware' of the contrasts between inside and outside. The inside, a landscape of cement, razor wire, and de-humanization, and the outside, a landscape of redwood forest, tribal lands, and the vast Pacific Ocean suggesting a visually open space, -and freedom. I kept personal journals within which I constructed an alternate reality based on this jarring contrast, in semi-narrative form.

In Dr. Fleetwood's book, "Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration", she refers to a concept, 'fraught imaginaries' that she develops, in which the 'imaginary is a place for collectively organized subjectivity' (see pg. 158, Harvard University Press, 2020) but is 'fraught with the potential to further marginalize and criminalize those who experience incarceration'. I am keeping this idea in mind as I work on my current comic book, Up the River.

LAMPREY LATITUDES is a project where I am exploring the borderlands of such space, through the making of comix/zines/oracle cards. It refers to an ancient fish that lives in the rivers here, that has long been inaccurately referred to as an eel. It has been depicted in horror stories as a vampire. Yet, it is as important to our regional ecosystem as the redwood or the salmon. Pacific Lamprey are disappearing due to the damming of the rivers. For me, LAMPREY LATITUDES signifies we are in a space where dreams and the imagination can assist us to find inestimable value in persons and places usually considered by mainstream society as undesirable or without worth.

Glamour Wood was my first solo exhibition in Northern California. It was 2003. Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, anthropologist and accomplished artist in her own right, graciously wrote this essay for the brochure. The venue was Humboldt State University's 'First Street Gallery'. Sadly, it no longer exists. But I am still grateful to Lydia, and to everyone in the community who contributed to the success of Glamour Wood. To read the full article, please visit my Glamour Wood gallery on this website.

In the Spring of this year 2023, I attended an artist-in-residence program, The Tyrone Guthrie Art Centre in Ireland. There, I pulled a series of drypoint prints depicting magical symbols, and folkloric beasts. The inspiration for this, was the narrative I was developing, for a graphic novel. I also visited the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, as well as the Marsh's Library in Dublin, and various beautiful and historic sites in the south. My gratitude to the Art Centre community, my Irish family and friends, and especially to the Faben Fund of the Humboldt Arts Council, for their support.

On July 2nd, I give an art talk at the Morris Graves Museum of Art on Artist Residencies, and how they can benefit artists in developing new work, connections, and ideas. This is particularly meaningful for rural artists, who lack opportunities readily available in urban centers. I will post a gallery soon, with images of the drypoint prints - so please check back! Image here: Scribe. If you would like to purchase this and any other drypoints in the series, please visit my studio at the Mendenhall Complex in Eureka's Cultural Arts District.

(above, cover art for a comic book in-progress. The first chapter focuses on the character Jesse Dryw, who dozes on the bus, and finds himself in a dream-like realm of magical totemic animals. When he awakens, he has arrived at a prison. Inside, he meets a group of mages who include him in their circle, because he has special talents as an artist. The chapter is titled, "The Somnambulist". The title to this work was inspired by San Francisco art professor Carlos Villa. Many years ago, I was his teaching assistant at the San Francisco Art Institute. Back then, I had many ambitions. Carlos gently tried to encourage me to wake up to life's realities: to stay grounded, stay connected to community, and listen to my instincts. Some ambitions really aren't worth pursuing. RIP Carlos.)

It's 2023: THE YEAR OF THE WATER RABBIT and the beginning of a post-quarantine (?) era in our lives and our art! In response, I will be offering workshops in ART & MAGIC, where we draw and paint with mixed-media, practice brief but empowering meditations and rituals, to develop our artistic skill and imagination. Interested? Please contact me and/or stay tuned for more, soon...

I'm currently at-work on a graphic novel that explores themes around restorative justice, art & magick, and our relationship to the natural world. I will post pages as they are being developed. Coming soon to Instagram and possibly someday: Patreon.

Thank you to the friends and patrons who are supporting this endeavor, which has been covid-years-in-the-making. Every kind word or share, and dollar given, counts towards the expense of the iPad I'm drawing on, the cartridge pens, ink and paper, and the cost of running this website, and renting studio space. I couldn't do it without your support and encouragement.

Fellow Teaching Artists from the Dell'Arte International School of Theater, and I, were interviewed by James Faulk about our art workshops inside prison, on PBS KEET TV's North Coast Perspectives, Season Three, Episode 10:
North Coast Perspectives

In January 2018, I present a new hand-drawn animation, FOGLINE and a series of 24 ink drawings, Twenty-Four Hundred Hours at the Morris Graves Museum of Art. The exhibit includes work by four other artist-animators, in a multi-media, interactive exhibition celebrating animation as an art form. My work then travels to the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, California, and was included in the exhibit Incarceration/Liberation, along with work by artists experiencing incarceration, parolees, and artists teaching in various prisons. My thanks to artist Treacy Zeigler, for making the connection.
For more on AwA's current group projects:
Artists Who Animate

My new studio at The Mendenhall in Oldtown, will be open to the public on June 2, 3, and 4.
See the North Coast Journal for this mention:
Open Season

North Coast Journal article by writer Tony Sato-Wallin, about artists involved in programming for people experiencing incarceration. Thank you Tony and the NCJ:
www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/arti…

From 2014 to 2022 I worked as a Teaching Artist/Site Coordinator for the non-profit William James Association's Prison Arts Project (PAP). PAP works in partnership with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the California Arts Council (CAC), to provide meaningful art programming in prisons, through the Arts in Corrections Program. This innovative program is active in all California state prisons, currently. It contracts with organizations to bring professional teaching artists inside, to provide instruction and mentoring for people currently experiencing incarceration. To learn more about WJA: William James Association
To see wonderful photos, visit Peter Mert's Prison Art Gallery:
www.petermerts.com
AiC has a new website: Arts in Corrections Program

Out of 700 entries from artists across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, my mixed-media print, "Caltrops and Roe" was selected to be one of fifty chosen for the 2016 Pacific States Biennial North American Juried Print Exhibit. Location: University of Hawaii at Hilo, October-December 2016.
"Caltrops and Roe" incorporates painting, drypoint printing, photomontage, in a collage format. For more information on the meaning behind this and related works, please visit SHELL GAMES on this site.

My paintings are included in "Here and There: Topographic Conversations with Morris Graves" at the Museum of Northwest Art. Initiated by Skagit Valley artist Ann Reid, the show features work by several artists from California and Washington, to engage viewers in a conversation about the the natural and human history of the Pacific Northwest. Paintings and sculptures by the influential 20th C. artist Morris Graves are also at the MoNA, located just north of Seattle, WA.: January 9-March 17, 2016. Admission is free.
"Here and There" was previously exhibited at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, CA. June 6-July 26, 2015.
A beautifully illustrated catalog documents the artist's work:
Catalog

Visual Art by my art workshop participants will be exhibited
at the Del Norte County Courthouse, March through April 2016, M-F, 9-5.
This is our second exhibition 'on the outside', which also includes work by poets, and photos of guitar students, participating in the Arts in Corrections Program (AiC) at Pelican Bay State Prison.
Arts-in-Corrections is a partnership of the California Arts Council (CAC) and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). I teach in the AiC Program through the William James Association's Prison Arts Project.
Thanks to the artists and everyone who made this possible!

My drawings are included in the exhibit Northwest Passages at
Studio Quercus, a non-profit gallery in the heart of the lively Oakland gallery scene. May 3-June 15, 2013.

Julie's art has frequently been exhibited at Humboldt State University, where she has taught drawing courses. Please see here: now.humboldt.edu/news/midnight-sun-work…