Interview with Katie Bonadies, March 2025
Julia Arredondo (she/ they) completed the EMERGE Artist in Residence in Print program this January. They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and MFA from Columbia College Chicago. They have multiple practices going at once including a series of star vessel prints, amuletic icons, and zines that use artifact imagery. Julia also does design work and is currently developing a visual language. Making art is a practice of devotion for Julia.
Julia has always been a ‘print person’. Their love of print started with typewriters and photocopiers in their mom’s office. The image making process is Julia’s way of drawing. Printing is an act of formalization for them, a finishing process. They can’t see what they’ve made until it’s in print format. Zines have become an integral part of their practice because they travel well and can be circulated easily.
Julia's grandparents were migrant workers who eventually settled in South Texas. Though Julia is not a farm worker, they have traveled in search of opportunity and their process is place-based. Over the past decade Julia has spent a lot of time moving from city to city and studio to studio, “I can’t ignore how that has influenced the work that I make, both in the design influences and the mediums that I produce.” Being on the road was exciting but it was also disruptive to Julia’s practice. In the past few years Julia has started to slow down. They have a rich collection of experiences to draw from and the ideas and motifs in their work are an accumulation of the memories from these travels. They can map out the connections between their travels and the different ideas in the work. While in Chicago, Julia’s work was much more product oriented and slicker. Being able to replicate an image in print and sell it knowing it will be in people's homes is a source of joy for Julia. They are responsive to the market and when they moved to Maine they felt a shift happen. “Mainers are not into this slick, super commodifiable aesthetic.” The adjustment has given their work a more organic feel because of greater accessibility to nature.
Since coming to Maine, they have had their first access to clay and have been able to experiment in ways that weren't accessible to them in the city. Their series of star vessels started during the pandemic. Julia had wanted to work in a three-dimensional way but lacked access to studio space. They started designing dream vessels and mapping them out with stars. They spent hours drawing. The repetitious nature of the project was meditative for them. When Julia gained access to ceramic studios they started transferring the motifs to ceramic forms. For Julia the vessel represents the human body and the stars are celestial. The joining of the two is a statement of how we are celestial beings.
Julia appreciates Maine’s collaborative community and worked with a coffin maker in Waterville, which led to their exploration of pine as a medium. They started making three-dimensional objects using pine and wax in their talisman practice. These magical objects are designed to bring about desired outcomes to the individual who produced or owns them. Desired outcomes range from finding a job, to gaining wealth, to keeping the law away, to enticing a lover, and more. Talismans can be made from almost anything and usually have a natural element incorporated into them. Amulets serve a similar purpose and are slicker, more mass produced. Julia became fascinated with these objects going to a botanica store growing up. They grew up in an Evangelical family and community where conversations around the occult were taboo. These objects are an expression of Julia’s spiritual devotion outside of the context of organized religion.
Making art is an act of mediumship to ideas for Julia that allows them to connect to something larger. It’s an intuitive experience as they feel their way through the process, “I do whatever it wants me to do.” The drive to create has given Julia a source of purpose and meaning. Creating is a compulsion too; they get up at 5am to go to the studio because they have to finish a print just to see what it will look like. The series Julia is working on now is called “Occult Americana”. It uses icons to create a visual representation of ideas, a kind of visual language. The icons are rudimentary symbols like a spiral or heart which most people already have an associated meaning. Julia uses this prior knowledge as an entry point to the bigger ideas in their work.
All of Julia’s practices seem to circle around a central theme, “I think I’m understanding the evolution of the spiritual identity of what it is to be of mixed background.” Julia is Italian, Mexican, American, and a traveler. They are rectifying their identity as a mixture of colonized and colonizer and how the context of their identity changes depending on where they go. They are drawing out these complexities in the work, which is a difficult act of deciphering inherited identity. They are understanding more deeply what syncretism means and how it helps incorporate indigenous and folk spiritual practices into the canon of the church. Julia is also interested in the complexities of the American identity and how it influences their own spiritual identity as well as the trends they observe in modern Latinx spiritual expression. At the root of the practice, since Julia doesn't necessarily belong to one or the other, Julia is developing a visual language of their own to voice these ideas.
The symbols feel more linked to the American experience for Julia. Julia previously used a lot of crosses in their work while developing Occult Americana, but they have more recently acted as a barrier of entry to the work as many people are moving away from organized religion. Essentially, they are elemental symbols that stem from a long lineage of pictorial languages. For Julia, the spiral is a visual representation of the past informing the present. The eye is used for protection from envy. The heart represents love and connection. The star represents the inexplicable, perhaps even fate. The flower is the earth representative. The ideas are abstract, but the iconography is familiar. Julia arranges the symbols to create different conversations.
Julia's ultimate goal is to make viewers feel. The visual language that they’re developing, the color ways, and the iconography are expressions of their moods, inner landscape, and the wholeness they feel within themselves. The use of iconography allows Julia to communicate these feelings without words. It’s not a move toward a post-language culture, but an integration of many languages in order to disseminate information. Julia believes this will be the future of communication.
View examples of Julia’s personal symbology at their upcoming solo show at SPACE Gallery, May 2 - June 21, 2025. The work in the show will be in conversation with Blissymbolics, tramp symbols, and magical motifs. Contact Julia through their website juliaarredondo.com or on Instagram (@future_juju).
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