Julia Muench
Leonardo, NJ
For me, art is illuminating, healing and necessary. I love creating and merging with color and form, revealing new esthetics.
Message
Julia Muench is a multi-disciplinary, visionary artist and creator, based in Leonardo, New Jersey. She works with merging various types of sustainable fiber/fabrics, repurposed fabrics, and other earth friendly materials into her fiber art. Her designs and techniques are her own.
Her vibrant fiber canvases are in three layers, some with embroidery and quilting, and with hand sewn-beading on the top layer. Some of the larger pieces take several months tor her to create. Her images reveal a lifelong interest in the exploration and understanding of world cultures, music, dance and organic forms in nature. Julia’s work reveals an abstract and sometimes surreal esthetic sense; starting with basic geometric and organic forms, and then breaking out of traditional, building into new structures.
Julia grew up in Miami, Florida, and with the influence of her mother, Deborah Winter, an artist in her own right, and father Karl Muench, a renowned scientist.
Julia decided to study music and received her Master’s degree in Music from the University of Miami School of Music. Julia’s initial fascination in geometric esthetics started with her career in music and composition, and then manifested into her art quilts going back to 2006. Since that time, she continues to develop her own designs.
Julia is an experienced artist, performer, musician, composer, and educator, has won achievement awards for her quilts, music performance, teaching, and sound compositions. She has also studied and performed and choreographed various dance forms such as flamenco, and worked in film and photography.
Born in California, with early childhood into adulthood, in Miami Florida, she now resides in New Jersey for the past 25+ years.
Julia’s original design constructions are inspired by nature. Each creation emerges in the medium of various fabrics pieced together through sewing. Julia chooses specific fabrics as one would choose exact colors and textures for a painting. She incorporates some chosen fabrics to create atmospheres, and other fabric prints to work in contrast to each other and against the geometrical shapes they are cut into. As observed in her work in musical composition, she sees the background as crucially important to the foreground and piece as a whole. A background needs to enhance the solo object(s) in the overall composition.
Her art pieces may be hung on a wall or rolled for easy transport.
Philosophy:
We learn more about our creativity through the understanding of all Arts: Music, Dance, Film, Drama etc.
Statement
Statement:
For me, art is illuminating, healing and necessary. Creating something unique, merging color with form, and revealing new aesthetics, is a passion of mine. Every time I am in nature, I feel a sense of wonder, gratitude and connection. I hope to convey the message of upholding and keeping of the land, through my artwork and process.
A viewer once said of my work…”Your art reminds people of themselves, of who they really are. They recognize the art they forgot about... They realize they do know, and can know, and that they never really lost themselves, that they are still there
and it makes them happy…”
I invite you, as a unique observer, to find your own take on what you see in my work, and maybe even find your own way into to creating something illuminating.