Julie Farstad, who joined the KCAI painting faculty in 2005, is primarily a painter who also works in photography, installation, watercolor, drawing and etching, as well as in collaboration with modern dance as an artist and set designer.
In her work, Julie is interested in looking at behavioral and visual strategies by which individuals, primarily girls, can question, subvert, or disrupt a dominant culture or authority. Specifically her work explores flirtation, passive aggression, and manipulation because they are methods by which power is destabilized by a sly inversion of the sweet or harmless. She is fascinated by these strategies because of their insidiousness and because of their relationship to a number of conversations involving rebellion and feminism in which she wants her work to participate.
Julie has exhibited her work nationally, and most notably, has had several solo exhibitions of her work, most recently in March 2005 in New York at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, and in March 2007 in Chicago with Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, both of whom represent her work. Julie's work was featured at scope-new york in 2004 by Ricco/Maresca Gallery, where she was also a featured panelist for a discussion on art, sex and religion. Three editions of Julie's etchings have been published and exhibited nationally by White Wings Press in Chicago.
While in Chicago, Julie was the co-founder, co-editor and co-publisher of mouthtomouth magazine, an independent, interview-format contemporary arts magazine that focused on the Chicago art scene. Mouthtomouth is archived by the library of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Julie Farstad received a B.F.A. degree in painting from the University of Notre Dame and an M.F.A. degree in painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating summa cum laude from both institutions. As a graduate student, Julie was named to the Incomplete List of Excellent Teachers and was awarded the Outstanding Teacher Award.
Previously she was an adjunct instructor at Indiana University Northwest,
Northeastern Illinois University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Web sites:
www.juliefarstad.com
www.zollaliebermangallery.com
www.riccomaresca.com
www.whitewingspress.com
www.mouthtomouthmag.com
Contact: 816-802-3407 or jfarstad@kcai.edu