I draw portraits of our home. The still life is the only life I may have. I make end tables out of burlap, wallpaper out of scraps. I weave backgrounds because I can touch them.

When you leave the apartment, I am afraid you won’t come back. I am making portraits of my household items, memories that can be touched. The loveseat doesn’t replace you, it is a reminder of you.

I see furniture instead of people. My relationships are with my dining set. And fruit bowl. I look in my studio and stare at my desk. It looks me in the eyes.

For my portraits, I combine my handwoven fabric with store-bought samples to not forget what each has to offer. I use machine-made fabric because an assembly line is a luxury. When did I know touching your hand would be a memory?

Images of objects are sewn into the fabric and journal entries are scrawled onto the background. The drawings and the text are a conformation, a quiet voice, a whisper. The composition makes it clear.

I’m alone before you are gone.

 

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Juliet Martin has a BA in Visual Arts from Brown University, a MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts, and is a member of the Saori Leadership Committee based in Japan. Her career as an artist began with creating web-based art pieces. Challenging how people saw websites, she added irony to the medium. But her fingers on the keyboard grew weary; she needed touch. Ironically, it was through online searching that she found textiles. She discovered a weaving studio whose Japanese philosophy is “there are no mistakes.” Eventually she asked herself, If there are no rules, no mistakes, is awareness the only indicator? As in her digital practice, she challenges the function of the medium. Her process focuses on aesthetics instead of rules. She cuts up and put back together her weavings. She takes something precious and recontextualizes it.

For the past 9 years she has been a part of the fiber community, having solo shows including at Ivy Brown Gallery, New York City; Chashama, New York City; and Saori Kaikan Gallery, Osaka, Japan.