Embodied Sound: A Solo Exhibition by Julie Woodard
On View July 5-21, 2024
Opening Sat, July 6th || 4-7pm
Live Music Performance Sat, July 13th || 2-3:30pm || Register
Artist Talk and Closing Sun, July 21st || 12-2pm
704 Catherine Street, Philadelphia, PA
Gallery Hours: Thursdays-Sundays from 11am-6pm
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, texture, 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.
Original songs accompany the pieces, accessible through the use of your phone and personal headphones. This soundtrack, recorded in Julie’s living room, introduces new layers and narrative threads, capturing a vulnerability that is less obvious in the visual collection. Julie hopes you’ll come take a closer look and listen.
