Julie Shapiro works between two-dimensional media: painting, collage, printmaking and drawing. She is interested in the rapport that working between these mediums has encouraged and the reexamination of contemporary usage of these traditional materials and practices. Her work is provoked by visual experiences, by the structures and atmosphere she sees and her experiences in the geography of her surroundings. The experiences of being at a certain place at a certain time where one is left with a distinct memory, often associated with color and light, and linked with an awareness of other physical phenomena. Encounters that are historical, material and conceptual are also important prompts. Her working methodology involves continual rethink and critique as she seeks to imagine and pursue particular form. Within the making of an individual work there occurs a shift that separates, selects and asserts through an open-ended process the experiential through materiality and formal constructs to resulting form. The consequence of the collisions of history, critique and her individual response are what trigger ideas and drive her practice.
Julie Shapiro received a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art. She also attended the Yale Summer School of Art, Norfolk, CT. She has exhibited her work nationally in numerous galleries and museums including the Brooklyn Museum, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, The Painting Center, Rush Gallery and The Drawing Center among others. Julie is the recipient a Pollock Krasner Fellowship and a Martha Boschen Porter Fund Grant. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Connecticut Center for Contemporary Printmaking, and Redline Milwaukee. She taught and received tenure from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and subsequently taught at Hampshire College, MA. She has given been invited to Colleges and Universities throughout the country as Visiting Artist where she has presented talks on her own work, given critiques of student work and taught workshop courses.