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Julie farstad

Statement & Resume

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"Under the Orange Clouds," oil on panel, 4" x 6"

STATEMENT:

In recent years, my artwork has developed into two different directions. One body of work focuses on the celebration of and advocacy for the planting of native flowers. Ancient Flowers is the studio-based, interior-facing manifestation of this idea. In Ancient Flowers, I layer images of native blooms grown in my own garden and in gardens around Kansas City. Painted with close attention to the architecture of the flowers, these paintings are intensely saturated and disorientating as I stack blossoms on top of one another compositionally. I want viewers to fall in love with wildflowers in the hopes that they will begin to recognize them, and perhaps even plant them in their own landscapes.

Flowers For Marlborough is the site-specific, public facing variation of this project. In Flowers For Marlborough, I paint and install large acrylic paintings on Tyvek of native plants on the boarded up windows of vacant buildings in the blighted neighborhood of Marlborough, Kansas City, where I live. This project, done with permission from the properties’ owners, seeks to call attention to the environmental and urban decay of my neighborhood that was once lush prairie. I want to introduce the formal and purposeful beauty of native plants to my neighbors, as well as offer a kind of psychological relief to my community who face the effects of living in the ugly aftermath of Kansas City’s racist policy of redlining. As part of this project, I winter sow native plant seedlings to give away to my neighbors in the spring, so they can experience the joy of living with the plants and the amazing pollinators they host. I also do painting workshops with neighborhood children, teaching them about the importance of native plants and using art as a way to create a communal appreciation for them. It is my hope that Marlborough can become known not for its blight, but for its stewardship of native plants and pollinators.

Urgent Experiments in Tending is an ongoing series of improvisational installations that explore the complex interweaving of the roles of mother and artist, as well as the anxieties I feel raising children in the anthropocene. In these pieces, I bring together intimate oil paintings on Yupo of my children and my plants, with live plants, often in stages of propagation, to explore the impulse to love and care for living beings, the amazement at cycles of growth and regeneration, and the interconnection between humans and plants. The presence of grow lights and electrical cords, as well as blue painters tape that attaches some of the paintings to the wall, are signs of improvisation and adaptation, survival skills for all living things, especially during this time of ongoing and amplified climate crisis. The eco prints of native plants and propagating succulents emphasize the transitional and ephemeral nature of raising kids and tending to the ecosystems in which we live. The fading dye in the ecoprints is also a metaphor for the natural loss inherent in growth, babies become children and then adults, succulent leaves will spawn new plants, dying in the process.


RESUME:

Education:

2000

M.F.A., summa cum laude, School of Art and Design, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL

1997 B.F.A., summa cum laude, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
1995 Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing, Aix-en-Provence, France
 
Awards:
2020-2021

Rosser Faculty Biennial Fellowship Award
Sabbatical, Spring Semester, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO

2016-2018 Faculty Grant, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
2013-14

Faculty Grant, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO

2011 Faculty Grant, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
2010 Review Studio Artist Residency
Body of Work: New Perspectives in Figure Painting 2010, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
2006-2008

Faculty Grant, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO

2004-2005 Incomplete List of Excellent Teachers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL
2003 Artist Fellowship Award, Illinois Arts Council
2000 Outstanding Teacher Award, Dept. of Art and Design, Univ. of  IL , Urbana-Champaign, IL
1999-2000 Incomplete List of Excellent Teachers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL
1997 Emil Jaques Gold Award, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
1996 Mabel Mountain Painting Award, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
 
Solo Exhibitions:
2021

Flowers For Marlborough, Marlborough Elementary School, Kansas City, MO
Flowers For Marlborough, 1157 E 77th Terrace, Mar 14- May 1, Kansas City, MO

2015 Orange Skies, Pink Morning, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
2014 Under the Orange Sky, Plug Projects, KC MO
2012 Ecstasy and Dreams, Studios Inc, Kansas City, MO
2008 Paintings, South Bend Regional Museum, South Bend, IN
2007 Prairiesummerheartbreak, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2005 Eat My Heart Out, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY
2003 more more more!, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2002 SUPERFLIRT, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2001 Northeastern Illinois University Art Gallery, Chicago, IL
 

Group Exhibitions:

2020 The New (ab)Normal, group show, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
2019 Work@Play, group show, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
2018 Para-Natural World, group show, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
2017 Zg Summer Group show, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
2016 Zg Winter Group show, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
2015 Zg Winter Group show, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
  In Pursuit, H & R Block Artspace, Kansas City, MO
  Zg Summer Group show, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
2014 Winter Group Show, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL
2013 Inner Sight/Insight: Driven to Dare, Governor's State University, University Park, IL
2011

Editions Artists Books Fair, 2011, New York, NY, represented by White Wings Press of Chicago IL

Hardcore Painting, University of Nebraska, Omaha, Omaha, NE

Emblazoned Cyphers, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Lincoln, NE

Between Thee and Me,  Greenlease Gallery, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO
2006 Narrow Margins, H and R Block Gallery, Kansas City, MO
2005 Hardcore Painting, Greenlease Gallery, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO
2010

Body of Work: New Perspectives on Figure Painting, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

Popular Culture Re-Constructed, Memorial Hall Gallery, RISD, Rhode Island, DE

Tethered to My World, Contemporary Figure Painting: Location, Chicago, Highland Pk Art Center, IL
Highly Personal, Isis Gallery, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
2008 New, Three: Kansas City Art Institute Faculty, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City, MO
Intersections, Byron Cohen Gallery, Kansas City, MO
2007

Paper Now, Ispace Gallery, Chicago, IL

It’s Only Natural, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City, MO
2006 Featured Artist, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, -scope Miami 2006, Miami, FL
Collect All Four, Byron Cohen Gallery, Kansas City, MO
Oh, You Beautiful Doll, Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, NY
2005 Sinister, Tarble Museum of Fine Art, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL

25th Anniversary Bookplate Show, Printworks Gallery, Chicago, IL

Five Presses, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, CO
2004

Summer Love, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL

The Artist as Collector, Northern Indiana Arts Association, Munster, IN
Annual Remarkable Women Show, Peltz Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
Holiday, Big Cat Gallery, New York, NY
Scope New York 2004, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY
A Sharp Eye: An Art Dealer’s 40 Year Journey, Evanston Art Center, IL
2003 Emergence: Women Artists in the New Millennium, Northern Indiana Arts, Assn., Munster, IN
Cold Comfort, Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN
Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Luscious Too, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2002 Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago, IL
2001 Welcome to My Dollhouse, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Luscious, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Just Install It, collaboration, Arena Gallery, Chicago, IL
2000

Out of Afar(m) and Whoa! La Giaconda, set design and live video installation for Whoa! La Giaconda, Merce Cunningham Studios, New York, NY

 
Selected Bibliography:
2021

KSHB News, Artist Uses Native Flower Paintings to Highlight KC Neighborhood Issues, May 12, 2021
KMBC News, Kansas City Artist Works to Beautify Her Neighborhood,  May 5, 2021

2016

Radar Online Poetry Magazine, Issues 9, January, 2016, and Issue 10, April, 2016
Art LTd Magazine, Robin Duran, p 31

2015 Art Ltd., "Julie Farstad: Orange Skies, Pink Morning: by Robin Dluzen, Jan / Feb, 2016, pg. 31
Chicago Tribune, Pick of the Week, Arts & Entertainment, Sect. 4, p.3. Nov. 26, 2015, illustrated

2011

ereview.org, Feminine Fancies, by Tara Kloeppell, March 26, 2011
The Kansas City Star, Traditional Meets Modern, by Dana Self, Fine Arts Sect., p.18,  Mar. 3, 2011

The Kansas City Star, A good ‘FIT’ at Review Studio by Nick Malewski, January 27, 2011

2010

ereview.org, Julie Farstad: Post-philosophy, A profile of a painter with many talents to choose from
Janell Meador, September 17, 2010

Chicagoartmagazine.com, Phyllis Bramson’s Painters at The Art Center in Highland Park,
Robin Dluzen, September 11, 2010           

Presentmagazine.com, Presenting: Julie Farstad and Peter Warren, Janell Meador, August 3, 2010

2008

Manhattan Arts International, http://manhattanhartherstory.blogspot.com, Renee Phillips, 7/30/10

“Women to Watch”: An Exhibition of Underrepresented Artists

2007

Chicago Tribune, Alan Artner, June 15, 2007

2006

Oh, You Beautiful Doll, catalog, curated by Douglas F. Maxwell

2002 -2004

mouthtomouth magazine, Co-Publisher, Co-Editor

2003

Chicago Tribune Alan Artner,, section 7C, p. 29 October 24, 2003

Chicago Sun-Times, Margaret Hawkins, Weekend Plus, section p. 24, November 7, 2003
Chicago Reader, Fred Camper, Section 1, p. 39, November 14, 2003
Word for Word, interview with Maria Tomasula, mouthtomouth magazine, September 2003
Sticky, exhibition catalog, interview by Kristen Brooke Schleifer, June 2002
2002 New American Paintings, Number 41, juror Bill Arnung, curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center

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