Artwork copyright Julie Alpert. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Julie Alpert. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, by Everything Time Studio, 2021.

Artwork copyright Julie Alpert. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, by Everything Time Studio, 2021.

Elephant with Spaghetti Eyes, 2020

Julie Alpert
(American, born 1980)

Location: North Hill Elementary, Des Moines

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Julie Alpert’s colorful, collage artworks capture the exuberance and surreality of celebrations, including their decorations, clothing, and sometimes disappointments. She creates lots of drawings, collages, and ceramics to work out visual motifs, color, texture, light, and illusion for her large site-specific installations. Each collage is like a small stage set. Alpert notes, “Repetition and reproduction are my way of really getting to know a subject; by exhausting the possibilities of a single shape or pattern I gain a kind of focus and understanding of things in the world.”

Look closely at this collage! It is made of overlapping layers of many cut-out photocopied drawings and shapes, cut paper fringes, and much more. They were made using office copy paper, office cardstock paper, translucent tracing paper, duct tape, colored pencils, markers, and ink in a hand-built shadowbox.

This artwork is part of a curated collection by Asia Tail for North Hill Elementary, in Des Moines, Western Washington, in July 2021. The local art selection committee wanted art that reflects their diversity, their values as a sustainable green school, and the 5th grade experience of growth, togetherness, and transitions. The artworks show us that everything is connected. Asia Tail notes “Just as people shape the land, the land shapes us. How we treat our plant and animal relatives matters now and for all the generations that come next.”

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Highline School District.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Julie Alpert makes temporary, theatrical, site-specific installations using everyday arts and craft supplies and found materials. She notes, “My work feels the most electric when tapping into the earliest techniques I learned as a child in school and summer camps. I cut, color, draw, tear, and glue.”
Alpert was born and raised in the Washington D.C. suburbs. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Washington in Seattle. She splits her time between Seattle, Washington, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is married to the artist Andy Arkley, and they have three cats: Coconut, Koala, and Baby Cloud.