Bio:

Julia Franklin is the Community Investment Specialist at Bravo Greater Des Moines. She served as Professor of Art at Graceland University for 19 years and taught studio art, art history, and critical thinking. Julia is a 2018 Iowa Artist Fellow and has degrees in printmaking, sculpture and ceramics. She is also a playwright, set designer, and grant writer and an avid collector of discarded objects that she uses to tell stories about the things we leave behind.

Artist Statement:

I use found objects to tell stories about what we leave behind and create immersive environments that are rooted in nostalgia. These multi-sensory experiences have evolved into sets for happenings and collaborative performances and blur the lines between art and artifact and installation and theatre. My most recent body of work, “Belonging(s),” re-examines my father’s suicide to reveal what we conceal and to start conversations about loss, identity, and mental health.

I am a collector of objects – of worn, forgotten and discarded things and intensely personal possessions. I am always on the search for an object – human made or natural – that gives me pause. I scavenge trails, parking lots, thrift stores, and abandoned places to save and preserve these relics because they still have stories to tell. I am drawn to their authenticity and evidence of use, and I carefully curate and reframe these charged objects so that viewers can analyze the layers of history, mystery, and emotion. Each precious object serves as a clue that speaks of the person that left it behind, the moment it was cast aside, or the place that protected it for so long. I rescue them and do for these objects what most people want done for them: to be recognized, chosen and uplifted – no matter how used or forgotten.

Taking inspiration from these found objects, nature, and my family, I transform spaces. I build small reliquaries from music boxes, or transform empty rooms into environments that reflect real or imagined places from my childhood. I use familiar everyday items such as letters, books, clothes, bedsheets and furniture, and I combine them with wax, salt, moss, sounds, and dirt to make sculptures and installations that can be tasted, smelled, felt, and heard.

My artful spaces invite communities to participate – to sit at a kitchen table for potluck dinner parties and share food and stories. Other installations see large rooms transformed into adult-sized blanket forts that offer a place for refuge and quiet reflection. When visitors actively explore these immersive installations, they become actors within the artwork and part of a creative process that connects, preserves, and redeems.