ART FOCUS

WINKING AND NODDING:
THE INSTALLATIONS OF JULIE ALPERT

By Elizabeth J. Wenger

"Tulsa-based artist Julie Alpert's playful, youthful installations transport their viewers to the unbridled freedom of childhood through brilliant color and fantastical shapes. Alpert spent her own childhood in the suburbs of Washington D.C., later moving across the country and earning an MFA in drawing and painting at the University of Washington. Her installations exemplify the mastery of composition and color that she learned in school, as well as the colorful style she first developed…


As an artist specializing in temporary, site-specific installations, does the ephemeral nature of your work influence your personal approach to life, time, and reality?

Yes, absolutely it does. I'm laboring over these enormous, detailed, handmade, immersive things only to have them disappear when the show ends. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere. Everything is temporary, lots of things require hard work, we all disappear in the end. There is something beautiful but also heartbreaking—in the acceptance of this. I think my work is winking and nodding to a very universal experience of what, if anything, it means to be alive...”




READ THE WHOLE INTERVIEW HERE