We had the good fortune of connecting with Julia Schwadron Marianelli and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Julia, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I grew up in a family of writers, artists and thinkers. My father is a newspaper editor and a musician, and my mother transitioned from professional ballet dancer, to writer, to homemaker, to career counselor who works to support dancers and artists. I have two siblings, one who is a professor of Dance and Dance studies and the other who is a professional musician. As for me, I was always encouraged to think creatively and to use my natural observational abilities to reflect what I saw in the world. I began drawing at a young age and to this day, my primary mode of expression is drawing and painting. Many of my paintings are text based, and I believe my early exposure to multiple channels of learning allowed me to maintain a simultaneous interest in both literal and conceptual reflections of my environment.

We moved to west Los Angeles when I was a young kid, and when I entered college, my family moved back to New York City. About a decade ago, my husband and I decided to move to South Lake Tahoe after he was offered a job here. I can’t emphasize enough how the change in my surroundings shifted the paintings I was making. As much as it changed my entire life in practical ways, moving to the mountains gave me an entirely new perspective on the environment around me and my relationship to it. My current paintings and my current thoughts as an artist reflect this in that they feature literal phrases, commenting on what we think of as human vs the idea of what is natural, intermixed with observational layers of imagery featuring moments I collect while physically moving through the landscape.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
In recent paintings, I often use text phrases that function as titles to begin a composition. These refer to both the natural environment and the human psyche. One painting, titled, “Suppression Tactics,” was
conceived of as I considered the wildfire conditions in the west alongside the systemic ways that
information is kept from the people who need it most. In the painting, “Disturbed Sites,” I’m borrowing
the pink filter of fire retardant, dropped from planes, and left on the post-fire landscape to refer to the
way that these disturbances can be both uncanny and generative.

The text matrix as the first layer is meant as a place holder for thought as well as a visual structure to
organize the painting itself. The use of a grid is a familiar motif in modernist painting and generally as a
visual strategy. Language and painting are connected through poetics, in the sense that abstraction is a
“universal language.” I choose to use my own text and apply it in a lose grid with a free-handed font to
reference this universal structure, but to allow the possibility that it might fall apart. By layering and
weaving the text in and out through the features of the natural landscape, the painting might become a
site to contemplate this alchemy.

In still other paintings, I imagine the landscape communicating directly through leaving its own mark
versus translating it into text myself. In works such as “Bank Breach” and “Weed Impunity” I am painting
on top of fabric that has been bundle dyed in advance with local plants, literally embedding the plants
themselves into the cotton. I imagine the finished painting as a kind of collaborative gesture with the
landscape.

As far as lessons along the way, my biggest take away is to keep working, keep pushing the work into territories that leave me with more questions, and to stay curious in the studio.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Lake Tahoe is one of the premier vacation destinations. There are endless activities to try regardless of the season. I am a trail runner, so during the spring/summer, I love to take friends on long runs or hikes that we can get to right out my back door in South Lake. Weeknight picnic dinners at the beach are a standard occasion for our friends and family every summer. During the winter there are lots of places to ski, to ice skate, or to just play in the snow. I feel very lucky to have a robust group of active friends and we are always up to something, There are plenty of places to explore outside and lots of opportunities to gather in town or around the lake at various spots. For me, the best fun is in discovering this place while you’re here.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
When I think about my “story” I would say my family is first and foremost responsible for helping to form who I’ve become. By this I mean my family of origin, but also the family I’ve made, including my husband, my children and my best friends. As an artist, I’ve been mentored by some very impactful teachers like Patricia Patterson, Isabel Bigelow, Frank Bramblett, Margo Margolis and Dona Nelson. My artist peers have also be hugely important in supporting me, specifically Rebecca Vicars, Arden Bendler Browning, Ayanah Moor and Maria Calandra, to name a few. I’m grateful to Frances Melhop, who represents my work and who suggested me for this profile.

Website: https://www.juliaschwadron.com/

Instagram: @julia.schwadron.marianelli

Image Credits
Sara Lafleur-Vetter Shea Evans Alisha Funkhouser

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