01 Sep Ones to Watch: Julie Gustafson

Materials salvaged from her own personal history serve as powerful components in Julie Gustafson’s monoprint/collages. Like geologic strata, her pieces evoke a quiet layering of time, a depth and breadth of tangible substance, set against meditative landscapelike images. Gustafson orders the planes of materials in conjunction with the random nature of a monoprint to reveal an expansive surface. 

Each piece, a self-contained essay on form and movement, acts as a kind of mandala, a way of unifying our individual worlds with our universal experiences. By fixing the prints to prepared wood surfaces and washing them with a tinted varnish, Gustafson transcends the print and brings it into a sculpture conversation, enveloping the past with the present.

Gustafson’s work is collected both publicly and privately by The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Marin Civic Center Gallery, San Rafael, California; Montana State University’s Connections, Bozeman, Montana; Annie Hall Interiors Show Room, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and in the collections of Bill Dake, Yellowstone Club, Big Sky, Montana; Kevin and Jane Stump, Birmingham, Alabama; Jennifer Almodova, San Rafael, California; Albert Barsocchini, San Anselmo, California; Lowrie MacLean, San Francisco, California; Gary McRae, Big Sky, Montana; and Tina Ovnick, Bozeman, Montana. 

Solo exhibits include, Monoprints, Gallatin River Gallery, Big Sky, Montana; Relics & Journeys, The Atrium Gallery, Corte Madera, California; Works on Paper II, Annie Hall Showroom, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Marin Arts Council Open Studio Week Two, San Anselmo, California; Freitas, McCarthy, Keating & McMahon, San Rafael, California; Lansdale Station, Fairfax, California; and the Barbara Heinrich Studio, Pittsford, New York. She is currently represented by the Gallatin River Gallery, Big Sky, Montana.