Julia von Eichel


I constantly struggle with the fact that my work is so precise and labor-intensive. So, every few months, I try to allow for accidents and explorations. I force myself out of the everyday ease of familiar materials and play around with mediums I'm not accustomed to. Before this series, I was comfortable but stuck. After having two babies back to back, I was bored with my work but too tired to try something new. I had to force myself out of my safe haven and start working with the uncontrollable. Using a blow dryer, I made marks with watered-down acrylic on the slick surface of mylar—it was wonderfully difficult to be in control. I'm a control freak, and this bizarre new technique allowed for unexpected doors to be opened. I started cutting these eerie, white forms out of the mylar, following the lines the blow dryer had created. I hung the forms all over the walls of my studio, not knowing yet what they were going to be. A world started to grow in my studio and gradually ideas came to me. The forms grow and attach themselves to the floor, ceiling and walls. I attach hundreds of pieces of thread to the mylar. Now I am back to my eternal problem: labor-intensive and tedious work. This happens to many artists: you see things that are not yet there, and that's your next move.

I was unconsciously developing a garden in my studio when, in all my spare time, I was building a real garden in my backyard. My work doesn't stray from my day-to-day life.