Interview: Julie Lee (July 2011)

As a singer, how did you become interested and active in the visual arts?

It was always so. I think I started singing in the womb and I picked up a paint brush shortly after! By the time I was 8 my parents had me In private art lessons and I was In the chorus from first grade through college. But it wasn't until I bought a guitar in my junior year of college that I started songwriting. To me songwriting is painting—creating a visual and audio landscape people can step into. I went to West Chester University just outside of Philadelphia to study voice , but once there I switched my major to art and ended up with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in painting. So you see music and art were always woven together though out my life.

What is the draw to "found materials and objects" for you? What kind of quality do you feel that it imparts to your work?

For me, I think using these materials is my way of remembering, not just recycling, and by repurposing these parts of our history that tend to repeat. Hopefully we remember....and try to not repeat the pattern.

I moved to Nashville because of music. But once here and rooted, I started going out to the junkyards on the outskirts of Nashville to look for things to "paint" upon and discovered that I love working in the medium of collage with bits and scraps from the past more than painting in a traditional way. In my junior year of college, I became a Christian and because of that relationship with God I see Jesus in the junkyard “found things.” In many ways, I was a found object: I was out there in the lost and found, broken and soiled, and He redeemed me, repurposed me, and imagined more for me than I ever did for myself. I hope my work brings out that sense of purpose in people. And I hope it feels familiar, like an old song you used to know, reminding you that God is redeeming everything, all of our junk.

 What do you think the Importance of art is in our current society?

Well, in its best forms, it makes us pay attention to our hearts, to really see the possibility amidst the brokenness of this beautiful world.

Who are your artistic Influences and Inspirations?

Andrew Wyeth, Wendell Berry, Flannery O'Conner, Hazel Dickens, The Gee's Bend Quilters, Leslie Patterson Marx, Todd Greene

What's your favorite thing on the Chinese takeout menu?

They aren't on the menu.....they are usually free..... Fortune Cookies! :)

What are your thoughts on aliens?

Extra terrestrial or illegal? I like both as long as they are helpful, not harmful.