Julia Bloom is a Washington, DC artist. She is currently making drawings using a vintage manual typewriter. Selected exhibitions include Permission Slips at Addison/Ripley Fine Art and Inside Outside, Upside Down Invitational Juried Show at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC; Micro-Monuments, a two-part exhibition at the Salzland Museum in Schoenebeck, Germany and the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC; and Sculpture Now 2014 at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC. Selected grants include eight from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and individual grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. She has been awarded seven fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Bloom’s work is in several private and public collections including the Wilson Building Collection in Washington, DC, the University of Virginia School of Law, Charlottesville, VA, and the U.S. State Department–U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru. The DC Art Bank has acquired eight of her drawings, five of which are on display at the Martin Luther king Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC. She attended Berklee College of Music, Boston Museum School, Maryland Institute College of Art. Bloom runs an alternative micro-exhibition space called Freight Gallery in a historic freight elevator in Washington, DC.

The pandemic, the stay-at-home orders, the social distancing protocols, and the demands for social justice exploded in the spring and summer of 2020 and greatly influenced my life and work. While sheltering in place, I began typing letters using a vintage Royal Quiet De Luxe manual typewriter to maintain my sanity, as well as to stay connected with family and distant friends. In time, I began to incorporate the typewriter in my drawing practice. Typing repeated phrases about coronavirus, social distancing, social justice, and human interaction led me to type more personal stream of consciousness diary entries. In these diary entries, I type about the details of my days and also my fears, vulnerability, grief, trauma, fatigue, anxiety, and depression–the feelings we are all experiencing. Using compressed charcoal and other media to make bold shapes, I partially redact the text, keeping some of my thoughts and feelings hidden. These drawings are historic fragments, obscured by charcoal; they are evocative snapshots of my life in these tumultuous days.

Exhibition:

In The Middle With You