A Forest, a streetfront installation at Plain Sight in Washington, DC, was created in response to the book Every Other Pine, Every Other Fir by Swedish author Axel Lindén-- a reflection on idealism, its shortcomings and its necessity. Texts intermingled throughout are adapted from Lindén’s writing. Texts on the glass are mine, and read:

You and I will sleep on the forest floor

You and I will protect our ears with cotton and riverbank

You and I will let things be marked for removal

installation at Plain Sight, Washington DC, November 6-22, 2021

Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Sweden and the European Union National Institutes of Culture, as part of the exhibition series A Window to Europe Through Literature and Art and the EU’s Europe Readr program, curated by Allison Nance and Teddy Rodger.

Lightning Field imagines the sky as a conduit, and the elements found within relate to conductivity or protection from an electrical charge. By occupying both the window and the wall, this work invites the viewer to pass through the “field” suggested by its title.

installation view as presented in Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You at Lyndon House Arts Center, Athens, GA; dimensions variable

Split Void, a solo exhibition at Gettysburg College, was organized around a question: can longing be divided in half and shared between two entities, or is it merely doubled? Can half the weight of desire be borne by another, thus lightening its load, or by sharing do we only magnify its effects? 

Midheaven, the central work in this exhibit, references the Northern and Southern circumpolar stars— constellations which cannot be seen from the opposite magnetic pole. While the moon behaves as a long-distance beacon, intermittently visible from any geographic point, two individuals at opposite poles will never see one another’s overhead stars. 

Text lettering spelling the names of Northern constellations spans the top edge, while Southern constellations cross the bottom. As north and south approach a central equatorial band, individual text letters slowly disappear.

The context of Gettysburg College, in a place so significant to the U.S. Civil War, also shaped my thinking for this exhibit. In essence, a civil war is a body at war with itself, an acknowledged intimacy that cannot be severed without mutual suffering.

installation at Gettysburg College Schmucker Art Gallery, March 17 - April 17, 2021 

The swan, widely associated with the far north, is the subject of numerous folk stories. According to one Finnish oral tradition, swans are uniquely capable of passing between the mortal world and the underworld; when dipping their heads below the water’s surface, they see into another plane. The Kalevala, Finland’s traditional epic, features another “swan of the underworld,” whose song is so beautiful a hunter cannot kill it. Jean Sibelius, Finland’s best-known composer, drew upon this story as inspiration for his 1895 orchestral work, Swan of Tuonela. Like Sibelius' composition, as a “tone poem” this work evokes the mood of the story rather than its narrative.

installation view as exhibited in Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, a two person exhibition (with Brian Hitselberger), Lyndon House Arts Center, Athens, GA, July 24- October 16, 2021

A “hundred year flood” refers to the recurrence interval of an extreme yet statistically predictable event. In geographic or real estate terms, this demarcates the high water floodplain at times of most extreme rainfall; residents may not be prepared for such a flood, but it is not without precedent. Rather than a physical occurrence, however, this installation alludes to a swell of events reaching psychic or emotional limits— a surge of emotional intensity that threatens to overwhelm survival.

100 Year Flood gives visual form to emotional residue, much like the debris left behind when floodwaters abate. A line of vinyl text encircling the gallery perimeter operates as a metaphoric high water line, comprised of words and phrases related to limits, endurance, forbearance and submission. These language fragments can be read from left to right, beginning from any point. Extreme flood is used as a metaphor, with materials arranged as if deposited in place when emotional or psychological floodwaters receded.

While the origins of this exhibit precede the extraordinary events of spring 2020, it was actualized during and in response to extreme cultural unrest. Interrupted geometries and battered structural forms within the installation attest to systemic collapse, accompanied by the inferred possibility of creating something new and beautiful from the wreckage.

solo exhibition at VisArts, Rockville, MD, June 10- August 9, 2020

This work considers the interior force of individual, universal desires: love that is deep and lasting, comfort, and the need to feel seen and heard-- especially by one's beloved. These themes are familiar to even the most disparate of populations and circumstances.

A pair of entwined fuel cans attempt a closed system of mutual support, despite the volatility of their presumed contents. The distant reaches of an infinite cosmos strain to reach their other halves. The works in this exhibition are inherently relational: each conjures the proximity of two bodies. The exhibition's title, The moon my heart, similarly conjures binary entities that could be one and the same.

solo exhibition at MoCA Arlington (then known as Arlington Arts Center), Arlington, VA, October 14- December 16, 2017

solo exhibition at Kohl Gallery, Washington College, Chestertown, MD, September 14 - October 22, 2017

"This exhibition's title cuts to the heart of much of Julie Wills' current practice. As the artist puts it, "Wishes are Horses adapts the wistful phrase 'If wishes were horses...' to instead suggest that wishing might really offer movement or transcendence." Wills' engagement with desire is facilitated by her chosen materials, all rich with metaphorical or associative meanings. The candles, cloth, twine, words and wood deployed-- to name but a few of the materials on display-- draw us into a material poetry dedicated to mining our more abstract lived experiences, and the conflicts that inevitably surface within them." 

- Text by Kate Markoski, exhibition curator