Library Art Award 2008 Recipient: Julia Blitch

 
Julia Blitch and her artwork: "Festive Flesh/Sensational Skin"

The 2008 Library Art Award recipient is Julia Blitch for her work "Festive Flesh/Sensational Skin.” It was chosen from among the many fine works exhibited at the Senior Art Show on display from April 23 to May 18, 2008. Julia receives a cash award and has allowed the library to borrow her work for a year. The soft sculpture is a departure from previous works shown in the library. This bold, vibrant colored installation will hang twelve feet high and stretch several feet from the wall, anchored by threads in the carpet.

Julia Blitch
Festive Flesh/Sensational Skin
Cotton fabric, thread
120"x48"x48"
2008

Artist Statement
Alone or within relationships, the actions and intentions of individuals are infinitely varied. It is through human experience and relationships that boundaries are formed and divisions are made. Emotional as well as physical boundaries can be explored both as extremely subjective and as extremely objective concepts, and it is this combination of subjectivity and objectivity which that complicates human relationships.

The established societal structures that exist to regulate and organize our masses diminish the unique nature of individuals. These structural boundaries designate common identities, and within these boundaries there is potential for unlimited breakdown into further categories of designated identity. Within this structure subjectivity is of no importance, but to the individual experience subjectivity is the only experience possible and is of the highest importance. Unique personal experience creates this subjectivity.

In art-making, process is crucial to the final visual product. Even in works where the specific process is not visible in the finished piece, the process is conceptually relevant and must be considered. The creation process relates to the final work in the same way that personal histories inform the subjectivity of an individual. This history, whether of an object or person, becomes the foundation of its or their identity, and in understanding this history we can understand subjectivities unique to that object or individual. Just as the conceptual beginnings of a work relate to the final product, this history acts in combination with the physical art object to inform the viewer and effectually communicate the greater ideas of each work.

I want to explore the potential of sculpture as a physical form which that relates to the physical world of the viewer. The human body colors all subjective experience, and while every individual has a body it is impossible to understand the subjective physical existence of another. Human experiences are both extremely similar to one another and infinitely unique, and within sculpture it is possible to connect both to the physical and emotional aspects of an individual’s subjective experience. Handmade 3D multiples relate to the experience of being one in a crowd of many, a singular unique body among many similar bodies. This combination of intimate individuality and greatly overarching similarity is both liberating and confining, and within societal constructs creates extreme diversity. Art objects that reflect these aspects of social boundaries and individualities are connectedconnect the art object to human life experience to human life experience, and within this experience, the experience of extreme physicality and the world of the human body.