Julie L. Sharpe

Graphic design for print, digital, editorial content, packaging, advertising, and in-store activation for Tribeca-based fashion retailer La Garçonne.

Identity, type system, and layout for Ann Taylor's debut athleisure collection, Luxewear.

Graphic design for lookbook & invitation for Ann Taylor’s 2017 collection launches & press preview events.

This handmade artist book commemorates a summer journey through France with five of my closest friends. I captured our trip on Fuji Instax Wide instant film while we explored Paris, the Loire Valley and Cassis. This book was set in Garamond, a sixteenth-century Parisian typeface. An edition of 10 books were hand-bound with coptic stitch binding, which lays flat when open and lends itself to a lovely, unique spine.

"Out of the Cradle" is a two-part series of photographically-based collage works, experimenting with both original and found imagery. My technique involves the scanner as a camera alongside antique family photographs in order to further demonstrate the concepts of memory, observation, age and deterioration. This mixture of old imagery presented with new technological influence provides original insight and context to the past. Specifically, "Out of the Cradle" is a study of the way we document the process of identity formation and maturation through family snapshots and portraiture. This series, while personal in that the work displays imagery of my own family, also asks the viewer to contemplate the universal nature of family dynamics. These snapshots give valuable insight to the meaning we assign to photographs, often based on what is not visible.

My work consistently concentrates on childhood and the familial. Themes of innocence and its loss are apparent in my studies of family relationships. The examination of individual identity within the context of lineage is my primary focus in investigating family history, and therefore the element of self is integral to my process.

This work was on view March 1–31, 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia.

For my first solo fine art exhibition, I designed an exhibition catalogue along with supporting promotional collateral. The catalogue served as a space for a more detailed explanation of the work on display with full artist statement and information about each piece in the show.

A central theme of this body of work is the comparison and juxtaposition of past/present, old/new, beginning/end. The symbol of a backslash became a fitting motif that was present throughout the book. The title of the exhibition, “Out of the Cradle,” is a reference to Walt Whitman’s most famous and ambitious poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” A full transcript of the poem can be read on translucent vellum nested between pages.

Before I started living alone, I had a very specific idea of what an artists’ home or studio is supposed to look like. I had a very specific notion of the process and the work that took place there. I was convinced that by creating a space of my own, I could transform into the artist I had always wanted to be, that my work would automatically get better and I would be better once I had established this space for myself. I thought that living alone and working in that space would mean that I would never be distracted, that suddenly I would gain the clarity and focus I had always lacked while living with roommates or having to share a workspace with others.

I was wrong.

Working from home actually means that my day is full of rituals to get myself ready to focus and accomplish the day’s tasks. I make coffee, I pace around, I change from one pair of sweatpants into another pair of sweatpants. I talk to myself and curse aloud and then take a break to sweep the floor or do the dishes. I procrastinate more now than ever, mainly because there is no separation between work life and home life; I tell myself that I can just do the work later because it will always be there, sitting at my desk, no more than 6 feet away from me and always observable no matter where I’m standing in my apartment. I no longer have the luxury of ‘leaving work at work’ because ‘work’ and ‘home’ are the same place.

One of the things I do to procrastinate is take photos of my studio. I bathe in the morning light and document the shadows casting against the walls. I alter the space just a little bit every day and record the progress, pinning a new note to the wall or moving the bookshelf to the other side of the room. I make and unmake the bed, arrange and rearrange the houseplants. I document the whole thing and then compare it to past photographs I’ve made of the space. In my mind, I am curating the optimal environment to produce the work I was always capable of creating; the setting was just never correct before, but now, if I just move the bed over to this wall, then everything will be perfect and I can finally get to work on my masterpiece.

I created this zine as another act of procrastination: this is me procrastinating further by making a project full of images I made while procrastinating—meta procrastination. This book was designed, printed and bound in May 2016 in New York, NY.