Julia Hill
Confluence

Julia Hill is an artist based in Atlanta, GA. She was born and raised in New Orleans, LA and received her BFA from Tulane University in 2005. Julia’s studio practice has a focus on sculpture, but incorporates many other genres. Through her business, Sculpture Things, she manages installation services for public art and creative project facilitation for artists and corporations. Her work is in private collections throughout the US, as well as in Argentina, Cyprus, and Hong Kong. She has received numerous grants for the production of performances and sculptural public artworks.

Julia came to ´ace as an Exploration resident after having been profoundly impacted since her first visit to Buenos Aires. As part of her studio practice, she spends a lot of time observing nature, urban forests, watersheds, and the surrounding region, collecting salvaged materials such as twisted steel, old bedsprings, concrete rubble, and other found detritus. These materials are an increasingly dominant component of her work, and become transformed into abstract images, dreamy landscapes, and animal representations. In Buenos Aires, Julia explored the ways the Río de la Plata delta ecology impacts and interacts with urban life in Buenos Aires. Of particular interest is the ways in which people in Buenos Aires adapt, utilize salvaged materials, and coincide with nature.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I love experimenting and learning new things, which means I am a sculptor that is drawn to a wide variety of methods and processes. I like to use contrasting materials and textures in my work. I think about negative spaces, light, and shadows. I am inspired by changes in nature, both slow and cataclysmic, microscopic and cosmic. I like to create forms that hint to shifting or invisible forces, such as gravity, tides, and wind. I am very drawn to welding, largely because it is so elemental. I utilize found objects and salvaged materials when possible, and often, the objects I gather will inspire and guide me to the final work.

​I collect bits of this and that everywhere I go. For reasons that aren’t clear, I am drawn to specific objects I come across in the constant current of man-made and broken debris that surrounds our entire human existence. When an odd-shaped mangled piece of rusty steel is asking to be a toad or a coyote, I simply must oblige. My smallest works are my tiny art army. I use these for creative fitness. I can experiment with form and balance, use up scrap materials, and maintain a playfulness in the studio. These often become gifts, given to friends, or left in secret places to be discovered by humans I haven’t yet met.