We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Juli McEachern-Havens. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Juli below.

Hi Juli, thanks for joining us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

About Me

I earned my BFA from Auburn University and, many years ago, enjoyed a successful career as an artist in Atlanta, Georgia. At that time, success meant something simple and deeply fulfilling: painting every day and selling enough of my work to support myself.

Then, one day, a picture framer accidentally damaged one of my paintings. What seemed like a disaster at the time turned out to be a happy accident. I got to know him, eventually married him, and together we moved to Dallas, Texas, where he began a new career in software and we started our family.

For a time, I continued selling my artwork through local galleries. However, as the demands of parenting grew, my artistic practice gradually faded into the background, and I lost touch with that part of myself.

Years later, while working as a surgical assistant, my life changed dramatically. Around 2016, I experienced a serious neurological event that caused me to lose most of my memory. After countless doctor visits and extensive testing, I was diagnosed with Conversion Disorder—now known as Functional Neurological Disorder (FND)—a condition linked to childhood and other traumatic experiences.

The experience was devastating. I felt like a stranger in my own body. I couldn’t remember where the silverware was kept in my kitchen, what foods I liked to cook, how to drive, how to use a computer, and so much more. Everyday tasks became unfamiliar and overwhelming.

With the loving support of my family, the guidance of an extraordinary therapist, and years of hard work, I slowly rebuilt my life. I often describe the experience as becoming a respawned video game character—starting over with a blank slate while gradually rediscovering who I was.

Despite the challenges of losing so much of my personal history, I discovered that my core character, creativity, and unique personality had remained intact, patiently waiting to be found again. This new chapter of my life, which I call “Brain Bloom,” has allowed me to reconnect with my authentic self and return to my journey as an artist.

My work today is different from what I created years ago, shaped by loss, recovery, and transformation. Yet I believe it still speaks with the same authentic voice—one that has survived, endured, and blossomed anew.

Juli, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Julie McEachern-Havens
Dallas Texas
www.Juli@TheArtStudio.com
Instagram@JuJuMagic01

Julie Havens is a ceramic and mixed-media visual artist and sculptor whose work explores themes of memory, social feminine awareness, and environmental connection. Through hand-built forms and increasingly large-scale installations, she investigates the relationship between personal experience and broader social and environmental concerns.

Education
East Tennessee University 1978
Gadsden State Community College 1979
Auburn University Bachelor of Arts 1983
Dallas College Ceramics 2023-current Life Long Learner
Exhibitions:
Original works by Julie McEachern
Phoenix Galleries 1983-1988
Atlanta Georgia

Si Newman Gallery Original works by Julie McEachern Havens 1989-1993
Plano Texas
Art House Dallas 2022
Artist Talk and Visual Showcase

Janette Kennedy Gallery
Dallas Texas 2025
Texas Sculpture Association Exhibit 2025
Dallas, TX Dallas College Art Exhibition
Best In Show award 2025
Blue Koi Gallery Exhibition Artistic Excellence Award 2025
Neudus Art International Exhibition winner
2026
Featured in Voyage Dallas Magazine 2023
Featured in Artist Close Up Magazine 2026
Artist workshop with Ceramic Sculpture Beth Cavener 2026
First Gallery was in Atlanta, Georgia; Phoenix Galleries from there I sold paintings at Atlanta Merchandising Mart, High Point NC Market, Dallas World Trade Center Market
Located in downtown Atlanta, AmericasMart spans more than seven million square feet and houses the world’s single-largest collection of wholesale home, gift, area rug and apparel merchandise. This annual home event celebrates tastemakers, business visionaries, and innovators across seven days.
JuJu Magic Works
Channeling Magic
I strive to be a conduit for inspirational flow. As an artist, my goal is channeling energy into material existence. Creating art is about surprising, juxtaposing, and emotional openings that rearrange us as well as the art. I am grateful for the courage to be permeable rather than vulnerable, which has allowed me to redefine my work as contributions rather than a series of successes or failures. I allow myself to play in the realm of possibility rather than be constrained by false fears of scarcity. We exist in the linear world of matter, space, time, the interdependency of forces, and relativity. Yet we also feel those magical unseen connections that occupy the hidden spaces between everything seen and known. We exist as matter, simultaneously as particles and waves, forever entangled in the unfolding knowledge revealed in the realm of light. I am compelled by the reality that many bodily rights, once assumed secure, are now being challenged for a new generation. It is both unsettling and motivating; I never imagined we would find ourselves revisiting struggles that echo the past. Through my work, I aim to confront this tension—honoring resilience, questioning control, and creating space for dialogue, empowerment, and reflection. I am drawn to creating work that is emotional, bold, and at times, playfully subversive. My art explores the depth of human feeling while embracing strength and vulnerability as inseparable forces. Recently, my focus has centered on female autonomy—an urgent and deeply personal subject.
Story of An Artist
My name is Juli McEachern-Havens, but everyone who loves me calls me JuJu. I am a Dallas-based visual artist. My work is organic in nature, paying tiny tributes to anatomy, the quantum continuum, natural sciences, how things work, the contemporary human condition, and the history that got us all here. I also just have fun. I have only recently truly understood the value of having fun.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Creativity drives culture, innovation, science, design, and technology. A thriving creative ecosystem requires more than admiration for art—it requires structures that allow artists to survive, experiment, fail, and grow. Society often celebrates creativity while undervaluing the labor behind it. I would like to see us all genuinely support artists and creatives of all types. Several things are essential: Supporting creatives is not charity—it is an investment in a society’s imagination and future. Arts education for everyone, affordable access to space and materials, Fair compensation, including better taxing structures that better fit the ebb and flow of big projects that may stretch over years. Artists rarely thrive in isolation. Communities benefit from artist collectives, mentorship programs, residencies, workshops, and local arts organizations that foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing across disciplines and generations. Art is not merely decoration. It can question traditions, expose injustice, and provoke difficult conversations. Society benefits when artists are allowed to challenge prevailing narratives rather than being pressured to produce only comfortable or marketable work.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The Resilience of Finding Myself Again Through Clay

Sixty years after I first began shaping clay with my hands, I found my way back to where I started. I am still grateful and amazed that I was able to recreate myself back into the original version of who I started out. Creating helped restore both my memory and my sense of personhood. 2016, after losing my memory and enduring an exhaustive search for a medical diagnosis, I found myself unable to work. Stress and fear ruled my days. The future felt uncertain, and the person I had once been seemed lost. As a kind of improvised play therapy, I began constructing puppets from discarded materials and recycled trash. These small creative preoccupations brought moments of enjoyment and relief from constant anxiety. Each completed project, no matter how simple, gave me a sense of accomplishment. Little by little, turning trash into treasure restored my confidence and inspired me to attempt increasingly complex artistic expressions. Only later did I realize that creativity had been present from the very beginning of my life. As a small child in Tennessee, I dug red clay from damp puddles in the yard and shaped it into crude little figures and objects. When my father finished cooking on his charcoal grill, he would sometimes place my precious, muddy creations over the still-glowing embers. To my young mind, watching those fragile shapes emerge hardened and transformed felt like pure magic. Creating was not simply something I enjoyed. It was my core identity from the very beginning of my life journey. Somewhere along the way, I was diverted from that original path. Life carried me in other directions, and for a time I forgot who I was. Yet when everything else fell away—my memory, my career, my certainty—the creative impulse remained. It waited patiently beneath the fear, confusion, and loss. What began as a simple attempt to occupy my mind became something much greater. Through making, I slowly rebuilt myself. Every puppet, every sculpture, and every finished piece became a breadcrumb leading me back to my own identity. In the end, it took forgetting who I was to find myself once again. Looking back, I believe I went through my own firing. Memory loss reduced me to unformed clay. The long process of healing from uncertainty, fear, and confusion became the heat that transformed me. Like those childhood clay figures resting on a bed of glowing embers, I emerged changed but intact. What emerged was not a different person, but the artist who had been there from the beginning—rediscovered, strengthened, and finally returned home.

Contact Info:

• Website: Juli@TheArtStudio.com
• Instagram: @JuJuMagic01