Last FEEDBACK FRIDAY, we welcomed botanical artist Julia Whitney Barnes. Kathy and I discovered her amazing work as we literally stumbled into the Albany, New York Shaker Heritage Society on a morning walk from our Hilton. We saw Julia’s work across the fruit orchard we were in and couldn’t believe our eyes.
Watch the recording here.
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Albany International Airport Art & Culture Program (where part of Julia’s show is right now!) + pre-security at the Albany Airport. Seriously, how cool is the Albany airport???
Julia loves using Beam Paints (and we just got a restock!)
About Julia’s presentation:
For “Planting Utopia” Julia Whitney Barnes photographed and collected specimens from over 150 plants in the herb garden at Shaker Heritage Society, in Albany, NY. The Society is located at the site of the Shakers’ first settlement in the United States, known as Watervliet. Its herb garden pays homage to the significance of the Shakers’ herb cultivation, and seed and medicinal herb industries. Whitney Barnes developed a series of works on paper and canvas with plants collected from the Shaker herb garden. Their compositions were based upon nineteenth-century Shaker ‘gift’ drawings that were complex, divinely inspired revelations of spiritual perfection, often symmetrical and incorporating botanical elements. Julia often works with the cyanotype process, an early cameraless photographic process that was invented in 1842, the same time period the gift drawings were being created. Through the use of the cyanotype medium, Whitney Barnes manipulates pressed plants from the herb garden along with intricately cut photographic negatives. For her works on paper, the unique blue and white prints are just the beginning and then she paints in many layers of watercolor, gouache and ink.
More about Julia:
Julia Whitney Barnes is an artist living in the Hudson Valley who works in a variety of media from cyanotypes, watercolor, oil paintings, ceramic sculptures, murals, and site-specific installations. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. She was awarded fellowships from New York State Council on the Arts administered through Arts Mid-Hudson, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Abbey Memorial Fund for Mural Painting/National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Gowanus Public Art Initiative, among others.
Born in Newbury, VT, Julia Whitney Barnes spent two decades in Brooklyn, before moving to Poughkeepsie, NY in 2015. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from Hunter College. Whitney Barnes has created site-specific installations at the Albany International Airport/Shaker Heritage Society, Albany, NY; Brookfield Place/Winter Garden, New York, NY; Arts Brookfield, Brooklyn, NY, the Wilderstein Sculpture Biennial, Rhinebeck, NY; The Trolley Barn/Fall Kill Creative Works, Poughkeepsie, NY; GlenLily Grounds, Newburgh, NY; ArtsWestchester, White Plains, NY; Gowanus Public Arts Initiative, Brooklyn, NY; Space All Over/Fjellerup Bund i Bund & Grund, Fjellerup, Denmark; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council/Sirovitch Senior Center, New York, NY; Brooklyn School of Inquiry, Brooklyn, NY; New York City Department of Transportation, New York, NY; and Figment Sculpture Garden, Governors Island, NY and among other locations.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY
If you are not familiar with FEEDBACK FRIDAY, every week, we speak with dyers, artists, scientists and scholars about our favorite topic, natural dyeing and color. Curated by Amy DuFault, Botanical Colors’ Sustainability Director and presented by Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori.