Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Throwing and growing

Clay artist Julie Singer wins ICA fellowship


By SABINA DANA PLASSE
Express Staff Writer

“Break” by Julie Singer. Porcelain thrown, altered and assembled gas fired. Photo by Paul Exline

Julie Singer found her way to the Wood River Valley through her art. As a clay artist and photographer, she has traveled across the country to pursue her art, and her dedication has paid off.

Singer has received the 2009 Visual Arts Fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, which recognizes the outstanding work and artistic excellence of Idaho artists and writers. The purpose of the fellowship is to reward an artist's dedication to an art form and promote public awareness as well as advance an artist's career. The fellowship Singer received is $3,500 and will be distributed in August.

After studying clay and photography in college, Singer wanted to go as far as possible with her work and attended graduate school at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., from which she received a master in fine arts in ceramics. In her three-year master's program she was encouraged to cross art disciplines, with ceramics and photography. For her thesis project, she created non-traditional relic vessels based on memory and old family photographs using digital imaging with a gum-printing photography processes.

"I wanted to take an object or relic and make it a new concept," Singer said. "I re-contextualized them in a new way. These are elements I still use."

Singer's work is playful and explores human interaction through anthropomorphic objects. Her ceramic "snapshot" groupings capture an animated moment in time and focus on time's passage. Singer's work features weathered surfaces, lost details and fragments, which reveal a history and engage a viewer in questioning a past.

Before Singer landed in Ketchum as an instructor at Boulder Mountain Clayworks, she was in two artist-in-residence programs, one in ceramics at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, Ore., and the second in photography at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland.

"My ceramics professor had a home in Sun Valley and I kept in touch with him." Singer said. "He sent me an e-mail about (Boulder Mountain Clayworks owner Susan Ward) and her studio, and I came."

Singer has spent the last year applying for shows and grants, as well as getting her work out into galleries. She said it is important to her to keep active in her field in a small town. It's always a balance between art and working, but the grant is propelling Singer in a good direction and allowing her to prepare to make another leap with her art.

"I was surprised that Idaho has such an amazing arts commission," Singer said. "It's tempting to pay bills, but I am not going to. I want to do something special."




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