Erase/Build

Julie Dickerson '10 is working on her senior thesis for the visual arts department. Her show will feature mixed media, including drawings, paintings and perhaps an installation. Street got a private tour of her studio, where Dickerson explained how her previous projects have influenced her plans for her thesis and perhaps her more distant future in the art world.

Q: Tell me about some of the themes you've been exploring in your current projects.

A: Last year for my JP I was playing with the idea of creating via destruction, so war became a natural content for that piece because it does exactly that: It creates new landscapes by destroying what's there. And my process mimicked that. So as you see, I've drawn in a bunch of stuff, and I would just go in and take it all out. Erase and build again, build, erase, build, erase.

Q: What inspired you to portray these ideas?

A: I think you just sort of naturally gravitate toward certain subjects and shapes. I actually did a study of my eraser and I really enjoyed that, but I really wanted to include figures in it. So I was thinking, what content fits with my process? And war was perfect for it. Plus, I had been in ROTC for a while, so it was something I had been thinking about.

Q: What projects are you working on now?

A: This year, I started out by painting a lot of coffee cups because I really like coffee and because there's a lot of symbolism with coffee for me. (Pointing to fragments of painted coffee cups.) These were all the best parts of different paintings that I did. And I decided to take them out and make one giant crazy piece that hopefully is going to be really fun and really interesting by playing more with abstract space.

(Turns to a massive pile of what looks like discarded parts of old projects, including paper cups, a mirror and a broken canvas.) These are the leftovers of the projects that I am either done with or I wasn't happy with, and they're going to inform my landscapes for the thesis that I'm doing. I'm going to have all this crazy junk all over the place, but then I'm going to have giant machines, like tanks and bulldozers moving it all around, informing the composition. And the coffee cup is definitely going to come back, I'm just not sure how.

Q: You mentioned that your experience in ROTC influenced your junior project. What other interests and passions shape you as an artist?

A: I love working out. I just ran my first marathon this year, and I'm training for a 70-mile canoe race later this year. So I'm a very physical, active person. And definitely that comes out in my process. When you have a big piece of paper like this, you're getting really into all the strokes, and then you erase it all, and you put it all back, or you cut things out. I actually originally wanted to do still lives this year, and I found that I just couldn't do it. It wasn't active enough for me.

Q: How do you foresee art playing a role in your life in the future?

A: Art will always be a part of my life. The degree to which it will be, I don't know. I could see myself using art for social purposes: Volunteering to paint murals in hospitals, painting murals in women's shelters, starting an art program with kids who wouldn't get the chance to do art otherwise. For me, I love people so much that I wouldn't be able to spend all day in the studio by myself - I would really want to use art to help people, because it does and it can. There's definitely a true power to it.