Juliet Karelsen
I have been collecting handmade and embroidered antique linens and lace - labors of care and love that were created by women of the past who were confined to the home. Embroidery is an art that has been considered women’s work, a traditional craft and a skill that at the end of the 18th century was taught to girls and used as a key indicator of their marriage suitability. As a part of my Flowers Bees Love series, I take these found handworks and imbue them with current day environmental concerns. I uses the 19th century process of the cyanotype (begun in 1877) to create records of disappearing life, using the tactile signatures of actual flowers that bees love and then embellishing the cyanotypes with embroidery. The flowers are indicators of the endangered bee population — a consequence of human created circumstances such as urbanization, pesticides, pollution and climate change. The Cyanotype silk screen prints are based on my embroidered work.
Juliet Karelsen was raised in New York City and has lived in Maine for many years. She is a multi-media artist and curator who received her MFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Though she was trained as a painter and painted for many years, in 2015 she took a workshop at The Haystack Mountain School of Crafts that changed the way she made art. She now considers herself a mixed media/fiber artist who sometimes makes 3D sculptural work and who is basically still painting only now she paints with wool, felt, embroidery floss, crepe paper, wires, cyanotypes, lights, mirrors etc.
Her work has been exhibited in New York City, Boston, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, Montana and abroad in Switzerland, Argentina and Spain. Recently she has shown in exhibitions at SPACE Gallery, The Rochester Museum of Fine Arts, The Center for Maine Contemporary Art [ON]now, Bravinlee programs, SPEEDWELL projects, The Maine Jewish Museum, 3S Artspace, and the Cynthia Winings Gallery. Recently, she curated an exhibition of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni at The Maine Jewish Museum.