Taking inspiration from science fiction, celestial imagery, flora and other biological forms, Julia Westerbeke builds intricate paper-based works. She thinks of these textural compositions on paper and canvas-panel as ‘sculptural drawings’ or ‘drawing terrains,’ each with a subtle nod to the entropic state of life, a quiet unraveling like a thread to pull. Ultimately, her work pays homage to the complexities of organic life, as well as its ceaseless regeneration, flux and decay. The imagery exists somewhere between the alien and the organic, the familiar and the foreign, taking a page from Gaston Bachelard’s writings on the power of the oneiric and the ‘psychic weight’ embodied in certain imagery and objects. The process of making these works is often meditative, making a case for slowness in the act of making, and the act of looking.

Julia Westerbeke is a Bay Area-based artist, writer and educator. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, most recently at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Westerbeke grew up in Mill Valley and Sonoma, and her work is informed by the natural landscape of both, as well as her childhood— and subsequent career— in her mother’s fashion design studio. Subtle references to design and a celebration of the decorative are embedded into her art practice, as seen through a feminist lens. Westerbeke is the co-founder of Time | Material, an art collective created for artists who are also parents, and the founder/curator of The Red Wood, a virtual exhibition in response to the ongoing California wildfires. She is also a longtime member of A.I.R. Gallery, an artist-run non-profit organization and exhibition space in New York for women and non-binary artists.