Local Artist Spotlight: Julie Sims

Monday, December 1, 2014

We're teaming up with WonderRoot to highlight local artists from their 2014 Art CSA. Inspired by agricultural CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), they have set up a Community Supported Art program in which folks can buy a share and get 6 unique piece of art created by local artists. How cool is that?

Our Eat Local, Art Local partnership will highlight each of these local artists as they prepare for the debut of their artwork at their Pick Up Party. The final Pick Up Party is this Saturday December 6th from 1pm to 2:30 pm at Dash Gallery, featruing Julie Sims & Jason Thomas. Join us! You can RSVP here!

We recently caught up with Julie Sims to chat about her art and what we should expect from her at the season finale Pick Up Party.

G&G: Tell me about your style of art 

JS: Lead with the hard question why don’t you? [laughs] I never really know what makes a “style” or think about my work in those terms, but I do often look back on work I’ve done after it’s finished and think “wow, it’s like I knew what I was doing the whole time!” so I guess there’s something “me” happening in there. I like to question reality, so my work tends to be a bit ambiguous and leave room for the viewer to bring their own experiences to it. I don’t think I have a good answer for this!

G&G: Tell me about the pieces you’ll be doing for the art CSA

JS: For the CSA I made an edition of artist books containing diptychs (pairs) of photographs. The images in each pair relate to each other visually… I call them “resonances.” I think of them as a call-and-response of the universe to itself; even though the images are of materially different things, there is an underlying order revealed that makes them echo each other.

I was also a WonderRoot Walthall Fellow for 2013–14, and the fellowship culminated with a residency on Ossabaw Island. Ossabaw is Georgia’s first heritage preserve, which is the strongest protection land can be given. It is a beautiful unspoiled and mostly deserted island just south of Savannah, and we had the privilege of spending five days there. The images in my CSA project are photographs I took during that residency. I liked the idea of bringing my experience there full circle and using those images in another WonderRoot program. I am very thankful to the opportunities they have given me, and was honored to be selected for the CSA.

G&G: Tell me about your process

JS: I don’t really have a single process; I’m kind of all over the place. Someone once said artists should be sure their work is “consistent,” which just makes me chafe. I believe in coherency, not consistency. All my work connects to itself in some way, even when I use different processes. I call myself an artist-photographer because most of my work is based out of photography, but I incorporate many other elements as well.

I initially studied sculpture, and when I came to photography a bit further down the road the sculpture eventually crept into the photos. Most of my images are comprised of scenes I have constructed in the studio. I enjoy having complete control over what goes in the frame, and of being able to make the unreal real. One of the most fun things about photography to me is that even though we are all aware of the possibility of manipulation, people are still willing to suspend disbelief when they look at an image. It’s a kind of magic for me.

But there is a lot of deliberate work involved in creating those scenes, and sometimes I like to relax and free-associate a little, so then I work on collage or some meditative drawing. Lately I have become very interested in interactive work and have been collaborating with my programmer husband on work that explores the intersection of technology and art. I have too many interests to stay in one lane.

G&G: Where do you get your inspiration?

JS: Well, it will sound cliché, but I am inspired just being alive and keeping my eyes and mind open. I never know when something I see or hear might spark a connection that leads to an idea, so I tend to wander around half in a day dream a lot of the time because part of my brain is always processing everything, filtering it for ideas and avenues of exploration. My friends like to tease me because a typical conversation with me will jump all over the place, sometimes changing stream in mid-sentence, because I always feel like I have more thoughts in my head than can get out through my mouth (you can judge how excited I am about something by how fast I’m talking).

Specifically though I’d say my biggest influence is science. I do work about mental health issues, so I love to read about neuroscience. People sometimes say there are no undiscovered frontiers anymore, but I think each of us carries one in our own consciousness. I’m also fascinated by astrophysics. There’s so much about how things work together on a quantum level that we don’t understand yet; we don’t even know whether we are the only instance of ourselves or not! We now suspect that we may exist in a tightly rolled multiverse where other selves carry out other lives. Thinking about those possibilities is wildly inspiring! If it weren’t for the fact that I am pretty much terrible at math I probably would’ve been a scientist instead of (in addition to?) an artist. My dream would be to go into space, and I hope I live to see that reality!

G&G: What does local mean to you? Why is it important to support local?

JS: “Local” to me is the very foundation upon which day-to-day life is built. Nothing affects us as much as what happens in our community. Supporting local is supporting yourself; it’s taking care of your own. Events on a national or international stage often feel overwhelmingly out of control, and local is the antidote to that, because that is where my choices and actions can make a real difference. As both an artist and a small business owner I am a huge believer in buying local and supporting others in my community.

G&G: Why do you love living in ATL?

JS: I am a rare native Georgian; I was born in Savannah and have lived in the Atlanta area my whole life. All of my family is here, which is important to me, and I love that we have seasons, although I could wish for a little more snow.

Mostly I love our arts community, and how open it is; if you put yourself out there you can become a part of it. Artists support each other here, and because I think we feel like an underdog as an “art city” we all work a lot harder to create opportunities and make cool things happen. There are so many great organizations like WonderRoot working at a grass roots level to make art inclusive of people in all walks of life. It’s exciting to be able to be part of the fabric of what makes Atlanta a great place to live.

G&G: What do you usually cook at home?

JS: I like to cook when I have time for it. In our house I am the baker, and my husband makes most of the meals. Thus I have the luxury of only having to get in the kitchen when the mood strikes me. I do sometimes cook meals, but that is when I feel like making something special or having a particular dish that my husband doesn’t usually make. We own a business (and of course I am an artist) so our time is often very limited, and we make a lot of meals that can be portioned and frozen for eating later. We love soups and stews in the crockpot for this, or a big batch of veggies and ground chicken made up for nachos. You can pretty much feed me anything on tortilla chips.

G&G: What do art and cooking have in common?

JS: I think lots. For me there is a pretty specific correlation between what I like to cook and the kind of art I make, that being chemistry. As I said, I love to bake, and I’m a huge fan of Alton Brown because I enjoy how he explains the science behind cooking, so I can understand what effect different ingredients and conditions have. Understanding how it works allows me to be more creative experimenting.

This is exactly the same with cooking as it is with darkroom photography. I love to work in my wet darkroom, mixing chemicals and developing and printing my own images. I have complete control over every step of the process, and can tweak and experiment to my heart’s content.

But sometimes I do also like to leave rules and instructions behind and just grab whatever is handy and make something, the spontaneous creativity of which is just as applicable in the studio as it is in the kitchen.

G&G: Tell me about your experience with the G&G meal?

JS: We had the chipotle squash flatbread. The meal was beautiful, with every detail considered. The instructions were easy to follow, and nothing needed was omitted from the kit. I think it is a fantastic way to try new recipes in a virtually foolproof manner. This wasn’t the kind of recipe that I would see in a book or online and think to try, so it was fun getting out of our dinner rut and doing something new. I love butternut squash, and this was a nice twist on preparing it, with some different types of ingredients than what I’m used to. My husband doesn’t tend to enjoy squashes and even he liked this.

G&G: If you could be a fruit or vegetable, what would you be and why?

JS: I would probably be some kind of hot pepper. I love the heat and will put hot peppers in pretty much anything; in recipes calling for bell peppers we always use jalapenos instead. Spicy food increases your metabolism and releases endorphins! And I might have a bit of a hot temper myself.