Julia Takahashi

(Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States)

Biography – Biographie

Julia Takahashi started her artistic career as a ceramicist, became a practicing architect and is now working in oil, collage, mixed media and sculpture.  She is a Happa with a Japanese father and a mother from an old New England family.  This background in the context of American race relations provided her with a strong grounding in the power of being a bridge between cultures. She grew up in Boulder, Colorado and now lives in the Nambe River Valley north of Santa Fe, New Mexico where she has her studio.  She has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Design and a Masters in Architecture and Urban Design.  She took some art courses during her academic years, but most of her training has been through apprenticeship, mentorship, non-accredited classes and her own study and practice.

Julia Takahashi débute sa carrière artistique comme céramiste, est devenue architecte et travaille maintenant à la peinture à l’huile, au collage, aux techniques mixtes et à la sculpture. Elle est une Happa, dont le père est japonais et la mère est issue d’une vieille famille de la Nouvelle-Angleterre. Ce parcours dans le contexte des relations interraciales américaines lui a permis d’acquérir une solide base dans le pouvoir d’être un pont entre les cultures. Elle a grandi à Boulder, dans le Colorado, et vit maintenant dans la vallée de la rivière Nambe, au nord de Santa Fe, au Nouveau-Mexique, où elle a son atelier. Elle est titulaire d’un diplôme de premier cycle en design environnemental et d’un master en architecture et en design urbain. Elle a suivi quelques cours d’art pendant ses années universitaires, mais la plupart de sa formation s’est faite par l’apprentissage, le mentorat, des cours non accrédités et sa propre étude et pratique.

Artist’s Statement

When is a kiss more than a kiss?

Kisses have denoted friendship, social rank, benediction and, in our present consumer society, pleasure and sex. The kiss is perhaps our most intimate experience, and this series explores the intimacy that goes beyond the physical. It is the spark which connects us to our humanity beyond identity and stereotypes. It is the consciousness of intimacy to our earth and the cosmos as we begin to understand the vibrational universe uncovered by quantum physics and the dynamic interplay where there is no distinction between the observer and the observed.

The work is highly exploratory at this moment. Spontaneous, gestural works on paper and canvas in oil and mixed media express the emotional field of the kiss. Digital collage works have become the basis for exploration into the consciousness of our connection with one another and the universe. It is the artist’s intent to experiment with printing layers of the collage images onto a transparent medium such as glass or plexiglass for a more sculptural and three-dimensional effect.

The artist feels that the values that grew out of the Enlightenment and culminated in Existentialism have taken human society only so far. The belief in man’s right to conquer nature and bend it to the benefit of mankind and the idea that the freedom to create personal identity and a life of personal choice have led to the environmental and social crisis that we face today. Concepts from various Asian traditions are being slowly integrated into our general consciousness and as the public begins to understand quantum physics and the system orientation of deep ecological thinking the paradigm by which society operates will begin to shift. Art often leads new understandings and it is this artist’s struggle to bring light to these new paradigms in her own explorations.