2022-2023: New Work : JULIA GOODMAN

Losing my father in 2007 drove me towards texture and innovative ways of working sculpturally with pulp. Having a child in 2019 deepened my connection to fabrics from domestic spaces and reawakened me to color. The two experiences were not opposite ends of a spectrum, but instead neighboring experiences in rawness and care. In both moments, I looked to the night sky to remember how short this time is, how the smallest moments and gestures accumulate into microcosms that are universes unto themselves.

I make work at the intersection of papermaking, textiles, sculpture, and painting. I transform bedsheets and t-shirts – fabrics that lie close to bodies day and night – into large and small wallworks and suspended sculptures with vibrating colors, expanding orbits, abstracted forms, decisive edges, loose spills, torn fabrics, dirt and brick flecks, and most recently, layers of watercolor. I gather, tear and pulp different color cotton bedsheets and t-shirts that hold personal histories. My process connects me to the Jewish mourning tradition of rending garments at the graveside, and the invisible labor of women who gathered, sorted, and tore fabrics to make rag paper centuries ago. Combining pulped discarded fabrics from various sources reflects our interconnectedness and that transformation is possible fiber by fiber, bond by bond.

In 2022, I began layering washes of watercolors on hand-formed paper made from different color, repurposed, pulped fabrics. The paper forms become active and unruly foundations that are bodily, topographical, and cosmological. The fibers that constitute the support system become the lightest lights and the darkest darks. Transparent watercolors bring forward the idiosyncrasies and imperfections of each form. Pigments settle in response to irregular, undulating surfaces. Each layer is held by the paper. Each layer offers me a closer look at the stories held by the fibers. Each layer accumulates into a composition that acknowledges the gravity of our bonds.

My labor-intensive forms serve as portals into elemental, shared human experiences such as birth, love, rest, caretaking, illness, and grief. I honor cycles of vulnerability and care by connecting intimate and personal moments to vast patterns and systems. My work embodies the entanglement of fragility and strength and the forces that shape and support us.

Each piece below is watercolor on hand formed paper. Pulp made from different color repurposed bedsheets and t-shirts. Torn bedsheets are in embedded in some of the pieces.