{"id":88785,"date":"2024-12-02T13:50:19","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T20:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=88785"},"modified":"2024-12-03T14:08:40","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T21:08:40","slug":"every-face-tells-a-story-in-julie-berrys-mixed-media-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/every-face-tells-a-story-in-julie-berrys-mixed-media-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Face Tells a Story in Julie Berry\u2019s Mixed-Media Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Portrait

Julie Berry, “She Clicks”<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When she talks about her painting, Julie Berry calls it \u201can adventure,\u201d which is a pleasure to hear. Art is properly always an adventure, in the sense that the real artist begins with the modesty to admit she doesn\u2019t know and can\u2019t always control where she will end up. Berry\u2019s curiosity, a great source of adventure, has taken her in pursuit of many subjects and media, and in Every Face, A Story<\/i>, it\u2019s her perspective on art as storytelling, and the cumulative experience that enables her to employ multiple media, that together hit the sweet spot. That\u2019s to say that on entering the downstairs gallery at Bountiful Davis Art Center, the viewer just might be immediately charmed by what they find.<\/h4>\n

Consider, for example, \u201cShe Clicks,\u201d in which a woman with an SLR camera confronts viewers as if she is about to take, or has just taken, their picture. The direct, frontal manner of her gaze is so powerful that the viewer may not immediately notice how her face is actually turned ever so slightly down and to the side. This suggests that she was just checking her camera, while her eyes, drawn in perspective so her pupils are not centered in their irises, have just turned up to check her subject directly. These elements of the portrait\u2019s story help bring it to life. They are also the only parts that initially seem painted, both the photographer\u2019s dress and background having been collaged together from various decorative papers and photographic images that, again on closer inspection, are seen to be painted as well, while the ribbon in her dress is real and doing a job pretty much what it was made to do.<\/h4>\n
\"Gallery

Installation view of Every Face, A Story<\/em> by Julie Berry at Bountiful Davis Art Center<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"A

Julie Berry’s collection of works depicting The Holy Family.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There are 25 in Every Face, A Story<\/i>, and each one of them rewards this level of close inspection. One can follow there the journey of adventure the artist took, the choices she made as she layered materials into and on top of one another. Layers are both subject and technique in today\u2019s mixed media, so they may be found in both the life represented and the way it is shown. Four of the portraits are a set, on the theme of bees and the hexagonal structures they create. (There probably should be six, but who\u2019s counting?) Titled, from the top, \u201cThoughts in the Hive,\u201d \u201cQueen Bee,\u201d \u201cThoughts and Honey,\u201d and \u201cBee Happy,\u201d the somber expressions on their faces don\u2019t immediately square with the theme of joy through labor, and I found myself wondering about that traditional theme and the hierarchical institutions that advocate it.<\/h4>\n

Yet the value of a direct encounter with the sacred, rather than going through intermediaries, seems to play a part in the portraits that occur among nine scenes from the story of the Holy Family. In these, embossed, metallic papers serve the traditional roles of gold leaf seen in both medieval altar panels and Orthodox icons. By connecting the symbology of icons that have their painted saints set in framing devices made of jewels and gold to her modern craftspersons\u2014the baker, embroiderer, and a couple of gardeners\u2014she stitches together notions of the well-lived life from tradition and the present. In \u201cHums the Word,\u201d which like \u201cShe Clicks\u201d employs language playfully to make a point, the idea of listening carefully not just to Nature, but to Creation, is elevated.<\/h4>\n