We were lucky to catch up with Julia Lauer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Julia , appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Recycling and repurposing materials is a key aspect of my art practice. Whether it’s thrifting for frames for professional framing retouches or repurposing materials originally tossed in the trash, I think it’s important to consider your environmental impact as a part of your art practice. I use second hand materials wherever I can, choosing to buy second hand or giving new life to something old. For example, in my glass practice, I take colored bits of glass from the “hot shop” or the glassblowing studio, and fuse them together in a kiln on top of a sheet of hand-rolled glass, This allows for every piece of work to be completely unique.
Printmaking, on the other hand, ties into my glass practice, where I use my old printmaking boards (and from the community) to frame the glass compositions. For my relief prints or screenprints, I head to the thrift stores to find frames to repurpose, utilizing my apprenticeship at a frame shop to rework the frames.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Julia “Yulja” Lauer was raised in Palo Alto, California, where a highly competitive environment imbued her with an inherent motivation to succeed. Yulja’s experiences as a second generation Russian immigrant have strongly shaped her art practice, alongside her exposure to an environment deeply affected by mental health.
As a BFA graduate from Alfred University in printmaking and glass arts, Lauer’s artwork has been presented in various international environments, including countries such as Poland and Canada through the VERSO/RECTO print exchange. She is a two-time Speedball’s New Impressions Printmaking Competition winner, between the years of 2018-19, earning second place with her multi-layer screenprint, “magda malarowska,” and third place with her reductive woodblock, “the butterfly project.” In 2022, her seven layer reductive woodcut, “even if my brain is full of weeds, i am still beautiful” won the grand prize in relief at the Speedball exhibition and competition, Elemental.

Her work focuses in a subversion of traditional media, in both sculpted and two dimensional works. Repurposing materials is a key aspect of her work, as is creating moods through colors and visual illustrations.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Something that I’ve struggled with for many years is perfectionism. It has been quite a journey to get where I am now from where I was in the past. Before, if something went wrong, so to say, it could end up in a severe panic attack, hyperventilation and a general sense of dismay. Now, although I still can’t say I enjoy the experience, I’ve learned to take a deep breath, and not only accept failure, but learn from it, and maneuver around it. Perfectionism can be a double edged sword. It certainly allows for an acute attention to detail and an excellent execution, but for when things don’t go your way, as often occurs in life, it can be a debilitating weakness.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My focus on mental health in my work does not only stem from curiosity, but from experience. The work that I create is born from my own struggles, and the years that it has taken for me to get to where I am today. For the longest time, art was the only thing keeping me afloat. Now, it not only gives me a form of therapy for myself, but it allows me to express myself and be free to share my emotions, which is something that I was afraid of for many years. Once, it was difficult for me just to get out of bed in the mornings. Over time, lots of therapy and quite a few thousand pills, I can truly say it’s easier.

Thanks for the read!

Contact Info:

• Website: yuljalauer.art
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/naecpoennitthee
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yuljalauerart
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-yulja-l-967051a9/

Image Credits
Julia Lauer