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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Dear Julia, I LOVE YOU. Love, Julia: Performed at PERFORMANCE ART NIGHT at Notsuoh, August 29th
Julia Claire Wallace read this letter on stage,
while slowly undressing.
She ended the piece naked.
Dear Julia,
I love you.
I love you.
I love who you are.
I love your hair, how you never know quite what to do with it, how you come up with bizarre ways to hide it, or you go through strangely beautiful fazes of different , not quite stylish attempts to make sense of it.
I love how you don’t keep up with its color, the tips are some unnatural red and the roots are the color of a mouse.
I love how you care about things, but you don’t care about things at the same time. I love that uncomfortable contradiction.
I love your eyes, a Gray Blue. Gray seems to be the color that fits you, the color of ashes, the color of your grandmother’s hair. Your eyes, your skin, your colors, remind me of the ocean, my favorite place, the salty heavy air, the dirty natural rawness of nature, with the water, a refreshing savior from itself.
I love the way you cling to existence, even when you are sick with emotion, with grief, with sadness, with desire, with loss. You can still see, you have always kept feeling even when you were hurting. You are so thankful.
I love the way you love people, I love the way you care so much. I love the way you give and love and understand. I love the way you look at people, who other people turn away from. I love the way you are scared of people, the way you shake and can barely breathe sometimes from anticipation and worry, I love the way you take deep breaths and try anyway. I love the way you shake and cry through the things you are scared of.
I love the way that you get so sick over fucking up, you care, you try to make it right, it becomes an obsession, sometimes the obsession makes you fuck up even more, but I have faith in you, you always seem to figure out eventually, you listen to yourself, you seek out the answers, you try. I love that.
I love your clothes, like your hair, you try so hard but you don’t give a shit at the same time. I don’t even understand it. I want to. I want to understand you so I can love you more. You pick so carefully and so oddly. Who is it for, Julia? I love the way you care so much, and don’t care at all, I love your confusion, your earnest confusion.
I love your body,
I love your clavicles, when I draw you I never leave them out. I love feeling your bones and organs through the thick blanket of your skin, what a miracle, you are, living breathing thinking seeing, everything. I can hardly believe that you exist. I am so grateful for that existence.
I love your wide hips, so female. I love your thick legs, so substantial.
I love your pubic hair! Never shave! I love running my fingers through it, I love its color and its stiffness. I love the smell of your pussy, it smells like sex, like bodies and togetherness and freedom.
I love your stomach, I love holding it, I love how you stick it out and look in the mirror and think, I look so pregnant and you smile! I love how you hold it in constantly, I love how you love it and worry about it at the same time.
And your ass, I love your ass, so big, and wide and womanly. So sexual.
I love your cellulite, when I see your cellulite I think of real sex, not television sex, not porn, not models in bikinis in magazines. I think of real true fucking. I think of glances you are lucky to get, secrets and vulnerability and the heart of things, I love your cellulite. I love that it makes you embarrassed, that it makes you worried. I love how it makes you nervous to ever wear a bathing suit, I love how it breaks your heart in dressing room mirrors, but it doesn’t need to, I love it. Its so beautiful.
You’re so beautiful.
I love you, Julia
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The death of a friendship - performed by Julia Claire Wallace April 2009
My friendship died, so i made a grave for it.
I mourned there, and I thought about how sometimes when things die, you want to die with them.
Then I got up, and i made a plaque in loving memory.
I put it where the friendship died and thought about life after death.
(plaque reads: In loving memory of the friendship of Julia and Nancy. May the memories of your creativity and love overcome those of your painful passing.)
I mourned there, and I thought about how sometimes when things die, you want to die with them.
Then I got up, and i made a plaque in loving memory.
I put it where the friendship died and thought about life after death.
(plaque reads: In loving memory of the friendship of Julia and Nancy. May the memories of your creativity and love overcome those of your painful passing.)
Friday, April 10, 2009
I Will Give You This Painting That I Spent Alot Of Time On And Put Alot Of Effort Into If You Will Slap Me In The Face
a performance by Julia Claire Wallace, March 2009
at Too Much Cake,
a show curated by Buffalo Sean at Colab for SXSW
Julia Claire Wallace chose a volunteer from the audience, an artist named Daniel Adame, whom she had never met before.
He placed his hand against her face, pulled it away and then brought it back hard.
She handed him the painting.
A strange feeling of intimacy was created by the exchange.
at Too Much Cake,
a show curated by Buffalo Sean at Colab for SXSW
Julia Claire Wallace chose a volunteer from the audience, an artist named Daniel Adame, whom she had never met before.
He placed his hand against her face, pulled it away and then brought it back hard.
She handed him the painting.
A strange feeling of intimacy was created by the exchange.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Letter to Randy Newman and Untitled Letter Performance by Julia Claire Wallace: Performed Spring 2009
Julia Claire Wallace painted a portrait of Randy Newman while composing a letter to him. Through writing the letter she became aware that what she was writing to Randy Newman, would not concern the performer, but would more likely concern her father.
Dear Randy Newman,
I am painting you. I am an artist, a student artist. A twenty four year old female art student painting you. I am painting you and writing you this letter because I decided to make a portrait of my family members, starting with my father, and for some reason my intuition made it perfectly clear that the first step was to be painting you and writing you this letter.
My father introduced me to your music, I remember him explaining the song ‘Sail Away’ to me as a child. “Do you know what this is about?” he asked. He explained it to me, I was struck hard in the gut. I listened intently and often. I went on to explore your other music; I was surprised one day, when he called me to his computer to play ‘Rednecks’. “You have to hear this song!” he said with this big smirk on his face. I had heard it many times, I was surprised he had never heard it; I had become better acquainted with you than he had. I guess it’s surprising sometimes when you discover you know more than your father on certain subjects.
I started listening to you again obsessively over the last couple of months. I haven’t found anyone except my father who likes you as much as I do.
I want to talk about what you mean to me, what your song writing style has done for my own artwork. But then I feel like I am losing track of my father here.
You remind me of my father. Your hair is the same, I guess that’s why I am painting the Sail Away cover, all of that curly hair, so confusing, so complicated, and I know I won’t paint it anything like what it really is. I am using wax, just piling it on. The task is daunting, I want to do it, but I am dreading it, I am worried at the same time.
I have to tell you, if I were going to choose a famous older man to date, it would be you.
When I watch your interviews, I think:
This is a man I would want to know intimately.
I want to talk late at night with him, side by side in bed
I want this man to love me, to listen to me, I want his undying attention, and I want his attention, his feedback.
This is a man I could believe in, this is a man I could truly love.
I think of my mother, being so scared and upset by the idea of younger women stealing the men of her generation. I think of the strange, disturbing sex dreams I keep having about my father. Do I think that sex is the only way to get a man’s attention and feedback? Perhaps that’s what this is about. And of course, you are a stranger and a singer in a far away city. You have a wife; you have a life full of the things you found important enough to be in it.
Of course, you will not answer this, of course you will never fall in love with me, and in reality this is probably a wonderful thing.
But as I sit here, with my earphones on, listening to your words that strike me so strongly, I want something I can’t have. I want something from you, that I can have from the people who are available and attainable. They are just as beautiful as you, and they are right here.
Or maybe there is no one available and attainable right here, maybe everyone is too busy for me, maybe everyone is so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t have time for me.
So I am talking about my father here.
I am pretending you are my father.
I am pretending you are my father, because you are inaccessible
like my father.
And I am sitting here painting you, so far away, I am sending you a letter you probably won’t get. I am sitting here thinking about you, wishing about you, wanting something I can’t have?
And I guess I can’t have what I want.
I can’t.
So what do I do?
I send you this letter just in case,
I send you this painting just in case.
And maybe it won’t get there
That’s okay
But maybe it’s just a nice thing to exist.
Maybe I’ll share it with someone else, and it will mean something to him or her, maybe it will make me feel better.
Or maybe I am procrastinating, or avoiding.
Maybe the truth is I should be writing this to my father, he isn’t as inaccessible as I pretend. Maybe this letter should be addressed to him, but he would answer, he would answer, and that scares the shit out of me.
It’s so much easier to write to you, Randy Newman.
When you know a letter won’t be answered,
It’s a lot less scary to send it. You’re done. Its over.
But when you write a letter that is answered,
You are expected to write back
You are obligated
You are responsible
You’ve broken that comfortable silence
And put yourself in dangerous dialogue.
And I don’t even really know what I need to say! I don’t know what I want to hear?
All I know is that I want to send you a letter, Randy Newman.
To say that I love the things you do, they resonate in me.
I sing your songs all the time. You are an important part of me.
I have so much to thank you for. You inspire me. Your honesty makes me search harder for truth.
I would love to have long conversations with you
I feel like you could teach me even more than you have taught me from this distance.
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you,
Julia Claire Wallace
Inspired by the letter to Randy Newman, she decided to send multiple personal letters and journal entries concerning relationship issues to a variety of people and places, but not to whom the relationship issues concerned.
Dear Randy Newman,
I am painting you. I am an artist, a student artist. A twenty four year old female art student painting you. I am painting you and writing you this letter because I decided to make a portrait of my family members, starting with my father, and for some reason my intuition made it perfectly clear that the first step was to be painting you and writing you this letter.
My father introduced me to your music, I remember him explaining the song ‘Sail Away’ to me as a child. “Do you know what this is about?” he asked. He explained it to me, I was struck hard in the gut. I listened intently and often. I went on to explore your other music; I was surprised one day, when he called me to his computer to play ‘Rednecks’. “You have to hear this song!” he said with this big smirk on his face. I had heard it many times, I was surprised he had never heard it; I had become better acquainted with you than he had. I guess it’s surprising sometimes when you discover you know more than your father on certain subjects.
I started listening to you again obsessively over the last couple of months. I haven’t found anyone except my father who likes you as much as I do.
I want to talk about what you mean to me, what your song writing style has done for my own artwork. But then I feel like I am losing track of my father here.
You remind me of my father. Your hair is the same, I guess that’s why I am painting the Sail Away cover, all of that curly hair, so confusing, so complicated, and I know I won’t paint it anything like what it really is. I am using wax, just piling it on. The task is daunting, I want to do it, but I am dreading it, I am worried at the same time.
I have to tell you, if I were going to choose a famous older man to date, it would be you.
When I watch your interviews, I think:
This is a man I would want to know intimately.
I want to talk late at night with him, side by side in bed
I want this man to love me, to listen to me, I want his undying attention, and I want his attention, his feedback.
This is a man I could believe in, this is a man I could truly love.
I think of my mother, being so scared and upset by the idea of younger women stealing the men of her generation. I think of the strange, disturbing sex dreams I keep having about my father. Do I think that sex is the only way to get a man’s attention and feedback? Perhaps that’s what this is about. And of course, you are a stranger and a singer in a far away city. You have a wife; you have a life full of the things you found important enough to be in it.
Of course, you will not answer this, of course you will never fall in love with me, and in reality this is probably a wonderful thing.
But as I sit here, with my earphones on, listening to your words that strike me so strongly, I want something I can’t have. I want something from you, that I can have from the people who are available and attainable. They are just as beautiful as you, and they are right here.
Or maybe there is no one available and attainable right here, maybe everyone is too busy for me, maybe everyone is so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t have time for me.
So I am talking about my father here.
I am pretending you are my father.
I am pretending you are my father, because you are inaccessible
like my father.
And I am sitting here painting you, so far away, I am sending you a letter you probably won’t get. I am sitting here thinking about you, wishing about you, wanting something I can’t have?
And I guess I can’t have what I want.
I can’t.
So what do I do?
I send you this letter just in case,
I send you this painting just in case.
And maybe it won’t get there
That’s okay
But maybe it’s just a nice thing to exist.
Maybe I’ll share it with someone else, and it will mean something to him or her, maybe it will make me feel better.
Or maybe I am procrastinating, or avoiding.
Maybe the truth is I should be writing this to my father, he isn’t as inaccessible as I pretend. Maybe this letter should be addressed to him, but he would answer, he would answer, and that scares the shit out of me.
It’s so much easier to write to you, Randy Newman.
When you know a letter won’t be answered,
It’s a lot less scary to send it. You’re done. Its over.
But when you write a letter that is answered,
You are expected to write back
You are obligated
You are responsible
You’ve broken that comfortable silence
And put yourself in dangerous dialogue.
And I don’t even really know what I need to say! I don’t know what I want to hear?
All I know is that I want to send you a letter, Randy Newman.
To say that I love the things you do, they resonate in me.
I sing your songs all the time. You are an important part of me.
I have so much to thank you for. You inspire me. Your honesty makes me search harder for truth.
I would love to have long conversations with you
I feel like you could teach me even more than you have taught me from this distance.
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you,
Julia Claire Wallace
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
A Painting for Tom Marioni conceptualized by Julia Claire Wallace and Patrick O'Brien Doyle in the Fall of 2008
This is a painting for Tom Marioni
conceptualized by
Julia Claire Wallace and Patrick O'Brien Doyle.
This video is a response to Tom Marioni's FreeHand Circle video and the radio interview he gave on Cincinnati's WVXU on 9/10/06. In FreeHand Circle he creates a circle on a gallery wall with graphite. Both the video and the interview can be found on Tom Marioni's website.
www.tommarioni.com.
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