Embodied Sound (a Julie Woodard Solo Exhibition)

Humans are complex creatures and metabolize experiences in different ways. Artist Agnes Varda summed it up beautifully when she wrote, “If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.” Multidisciplinary artist Julie Woodard processes life through songwriting, time in nature, and the creation of textile terrains. Her work explores themes of loss, the search for hope, our relationship to place, and the things we carry. This year, she began following a curiosity about what might happen if she invited her artistic practices to be in conversation. Embodied Sound is the first presentation of this creative inquiry.

Woodard interweaves found materials and heirloom scraps to create a visual vernacular for her original music. The exhibition features mixed media works that demonstrate new explorations of scale, materials, and dimension while maintaining the artist’s commitment to using all repurposed materials. From mountaintops to city blocks, landscapes are captured through intricate framed works and playful sculptures. Woodard infuses the collection with a sense of home through the use of domestic artifacts that carry their own frequencies. Among them, a salvaged doorbell emits an ocean wave, an inherited clock becomes a portal to a backyard garden, and her father’s vintage radio serves as the foundation of a rowhouse.

Sonic excerpts accompany the pieces, accessible via QR code. Primarily presented as unedited voice memos, the soundtrack shares personal narratives, capturing a vulnerability that is less obvious in the visual collection. Julie hopes you’ll come take a closer look and listen. Please bring your headphones.

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 6 from 4-7 pm

Closing Reception and Artist Talk: Sunday, July 21 from 12-2pm

Julie “Juicebox” Woodard splits her time between mountain trails and the streets of Philadelphia. Using salvaged textiles, found objects, pigments and thread, she creates wearable pieces, impressionistic landscapes, functional sculptures, and site specific projects that convey her passion for nature, memory, and creative reuse. Current incarnations pay tribute to her late mom and repurpose family heirlooms and well as feature post-consumer plastics, damaged textiles gathered from the community, pre-consumer waste, and street debris. Julie’s artistic practice is rooted in the tension between holding on and letting go, of memorialization and detachment. A self-proclaimed ‘doula of discarded things,’ she transforms both trash and sentimental scraps into kinetic compositions of texture and light.

Julie holds a BA in American Studies from Temple University and an MA in Museum Education from the University of the Arts. She was the Fall 2022 Featured Artist for FABSCRAP and has designed capsule collections for slow fashion brand Au Boulot Workwear. Following a strong interest in site-specific public works that connect people to nature, her latest projects include Pockets of Light, an installation along the Delaware River Waterfront, an immersive oceanic reading “nook” for the 2023 Fringe Festival’s presentation of Read Me A World, and a functional sea sculpture for the Philadelphia International Airport. Julie teaches low-waste art and mending classes throughout the Philadelphia region. Some of her favorite projects are commissions where clients provide personal artifacts to be workshopped into a custom piece. She has worked with everything from vintage wedding dresses, to baby clothes, to t-shirt collections and hole-filled sweaters, and is honored to help others pay tribute to special people, places, and occasions by breathing art into old things. All of Julie’s visual work has a story, and most of it also has a song. Learn more at juiceboxworkshop.com