Julie Nelson is a British artist and designer who explores the visual connections and regular patterns found throughout the natural world. Her work focuses on the elemental and she often works on a theme to create a series of pieces. These series of objects are often exhibited in a group installation, where they both contrast and interrelate. Julie has gained a reputation for her striking ceramic work, which encompasses the worlds of art and design.
Julie studied a BA in 3D design, specialising in ceramics, at Middlesex Polytechnic where she mainly focused on sculpture. Followed her degree, she developed a range of opaque, minimal lamps. This collection was included in German lighting designer Ingo Maurer's Design Yearbook and they were selected for an exhibition at MOMA, by the architect Winka Dubbeldam. This was followed by exhibitions in the USA and Europe.
Julie's ongoing fascination with the natural world was encouraged by a childhood spent on the coast collecting shells and pebbles on days out. This has led to an abiding interest in the environment and our relationship to it. The natural world, science, curiosity and collecting are the themes that inspire her. The artist's work, based on biology and botany, seeks the visual regularities found in the world around us. She investigates pattern and variation but also highlights how everything is related. Julie uses the material of clay to explore this. The ceramicist achieves random variations by hand building in porcelain and stoneware with layers of slip and matt glazes that accentuate elemental and microscopic details within the surface texture.
Julie has now returned to living on the coast and works from her studio in Brighton. This coastal setting has informed the ceramicist's work and inspired her to develop installations that continue the theme of nature and its variety of patterns.
"I explore the visual connections found across the natural world, embracing our contradictory relationship with it. I am interested in themes and variations, from cellular to plant and skeletal structures. My work emphasizes the elemental and I craft in a series often displaying objects in groups that interrelate".
Julie Nelson