Factory Dreamscapes: A Conversation With Julianna Biernacki
Julianna Biernacki
The Cotton Factory Mill Building, Hamilton.
Julianna stands to my left, our eyes downcast, studying the worn hardwood floors. She’s showing me what at first glance resembles a random scattering of flush metal circles perfectly embossed into the ground; their presence barely perceptible to the eye unless the seeker knows to trace their origin story. What Julianna tells me is these ephemera are baby onesie snaps that went wayside and were stomped into the ground by the soles of past factory workers. She mentions this detail for the second time since our arrival at The Cotton Factory, the location of her tufting studio, and the childlike grin on her face as she does so suggests this quirk is something she loves about the space.
There’s a lore-like quality to this tender anecdote, and we speak about the effects of time on this impressive building—its many iterations and uses since its creation; and how those floor ornaments archive a version of Hamilton that contrasts the now beautified modern space designed for artist studios: one of utility, labour, and industry. As we walk towards her corner studio lit by large muted windows, the factory space forces me to wonder about the extraneous responsibilities of artists, those who can’t dedicate their lives solely to art, and the choices we must make between beauty and duty.
This affinity between art and labour follows us as Julianna tours me around her studio, where everything appears akin to pragmatism. Even the art books she keeps neatly stacked on a shelf, she tells me, are sources for colour inspiration. As we peruse the stack, she grabs a book on René Magritte, and we talk about our shared interest in the Belgian artist, whose life also curiously intersected with industry. His father was a tailor, and his mother a milliner, and after studying Fine Arts, he started his career as a designer for a wallpaper factory. In our conversation that follows, Julianna stories her own ties to Surrealism, architecture, and art, and their interwoven presence in her rug tufting practice.
…
Julianna: I was always interested in Surrealism. In high school, I was like, I want to do surrealist art. This speaks to my high school self [pointing to a book on Magritte].
Right. Because your earlier stuff is mostly painting or other mediums.
J: Yeah. I was a painter all throughout university, and I was interested in textiles. It was cool because my Nonno is a tailor so I always grew up with it. He would buy bolts of fabric, and he would make everything out of that fabric. He would make matching pyjamas, pillows, curtains, anything. It's like, Nonno, what's with all this pink fabric? He's like, the bolt was $5. We love a frugal king. That’s so cute. I feel like I grew up with a lot of textiles, but I was painting in school.
Were you ever interested in textiles in terms of clothing or other forms of textile work?
J: Kind of like all of it. As a kid, I was like, I can be a fashion designer. And then I was like, damn, to make a pattern is kind of hard. But I was painting all throughout school and then, I saw this video of someone using the punch needle, and I thought, OK, that’s sick. One day I’ll do it when I have time. Then I was like, why am I waiting to do this? I should just do it and figure out how to incorporate it into my work now. So I bought a punch needle from Amazon, and I thought, this is kind of fun. I kind of like this. Then I started doing these painting rug diptychs. I did this one painting of an empty swimming pool and there was a puddle on the side, and then I made a rug puddle in front of it. I was like, ohh, I’m doing this really cool thing. Then I just stopped painting entirely. It’s just so fun. There’s something about tactile craft versus fine art.
You’re obviously using your hands for both, but I feel like holding something that’s connected to an energy source is so different from a paint brush; it has a totally different feel to it.
J: It’s got power, you know? I feel like a paintbrush is an extension of yourself because you have so much control. But with this, you still have control, but a lot less because it is a machine, a tufting machine. There’s also a lot of prep work that’s involved with this. The hours to prep all the yarn, sketch out everything, da-da-da-da-da, is more than the actual hours of tufting, which is crazy because I always said I didn’t like printmaking because it was too much prep work and not enough just actually doing it. Now my practice is so much prep, so it’s funny how that happens. I’m never going to be a printmaker [she says in a voice I can only describe as fresa—the Spanish word for “strawberry”].
It's interesting when you see a piece of art, and it’s almost like, when something is so good, you don't even think there could be the possibility of so much work being behind it. Does that make sense?
J: Yeah. It just appears.
You’re like, it’s just so beautiful. Beauty makes you forget all of the labour that goes behind it almost. I don't know. Or maybe that's just me.
J: It doesn't feel like a person made it, it just exists.
Some divine entity.
J: But no, it’s hours of blood, sweat and tears. Every time I stretch the fabric, I always cut myself from these tack strips. There’s real blood going into this [laughs].
But no one thinks about that when they're looking at the final piece. Well, I shouldn't say, no one. But maybe that's not the initial thing that we think about when we look at a finished piece of art or some kind of creation.
J: Everything is more complicated than you think.
Which is why I was so excited for today. You don’t often get to see the behind the scenes of something. We tend to celebrate things once they're finished or up in a gallery. We don't often celebrate all of the little things that we have to do before we get there.
“AL-LURE-ING” by Julianna Biernacki. Tufted acrylic yarn on monks cloth. An Unconventional Hue at Back Alley Gallery.
J: Which is why I wanted to start the Artist Talk series because the best part is hearing people's process. It's amazing to see these finished works, and I can appreciate them, but how did you get there? Tell me how you got there. I’m just so interested. You know when you talk to someone, and you’re saying something, and then that triggers something else? You bring up this random thing, but it isn’t random, because I thought of this one thing, and it made me think of something else. That’s why I feel people’s process is: what triggered this idea? Like, OK, I thought about chartreuse, and I talked to Marley [her partner] about chartreuse. He was like, oh yeah, fishing lures; they’re this really bright chartreuse colour. I was like, true.
Treuse.
J: Char-TREUSE. Truese.
Sorry. That was stupid [laughter]. So what do the folks of Hamilton need to know about bright chartreuse? You said it was the colour of the year.
J: I do think it’s the colour of the year. We had our nice cobalt blue moment, but there’s something about chartreuse. I have in the write-up for the show how I was thinking about Picasso’s Blue Period. It’s cool that he has this whole series of works surrounded by a color. But then, I was asked to curate this show for February, and I didn’t really want blue. February is cold, and people are sad. We need something brighter than blue. A lot of this season is already so sleepy and muted. So, OK, what's the brightest colour I can think of? Chartreuse.
It’s interesting because chartreuse is not typically a colour that you see in nature during this time of the year.
J: That’s kind of why I wanted it. It’s the opposite of how it is outside.
Is that your interest in Surrealism coming through?
J: Yeah. I’m like, chartreuse everywhere [laughs].
How can I make reality?
J: But just a little wrong? You think it’s real and it’s not.
…
You were recently in Berlin; a city well-known for its avant-garde arts & culture scene. The energy of the city is also like Hamilton’s: industrious. It has some grit to it.
J: It has grime. Some sludge to it.
I was wondering if there was anything about the energy of the city that inspired you, or has left you feeling inspired.
J: Berlin was really sick. It's a really lively city, and there's art everywhere. Graffiti, everywhere. Stickers, everywhere. It's like if you gave artists a whole city, and they can do whatever they want with it. They're all just writing their name everywhere. So on one hand, it's really cool to see. On the other hand, it's so saturated. What do I focus on? You see a wall, there are so many things, and it feels like sludge. Sometimes it's too much. We got to edit this down a little bit. We can't all write our name on this wall. But it’s also kind of cool at the same time–it's overstimulating and cool. It feels like a city that you could move to and maybe it's a little rough at the beginning. You only eat ramen, and you have no money, but then, something really amazing happens. You have a big break. That’s the vibe of Berlin. You struggle, but then when you make it, you really fucking make it.
That reminds me of the Chelsea Hotel in the late 60s, early 70s. It’s all these artists who want to make it, and it was often the ones who put in so much of their energy into their art–to the point that they didn’t eat–that made it.
J: It’s like you have to give up your whole life for this which is a little bit toxic.
I wonder if we can move towards an image of the artist that is not the isolated artist, needing to suffer and be malnourished in order to be a genius.
J: When can we just talk about the rich artists? [laughs].
But I also understand what you mean about this oversaturation of art. It makes me think of the age-old question: what is art? Or what makes something art versus just an object or thing? I feel like, often, we see something as art because it's displayed on a wall or it's in a gallery, and how space then informs. Because it’s in that space, it becomes legitimized. Whereas I think that art that’s on city walls, or like tagging, is in a totally different environment. Which makes me think of your commissioned piece with Pier 8 Pop-ups last summer, where you took your artwork and had to transform or reimagine it to make it withstand the outdoor environment of the peninsula. A rug outside is going to get wet and mouldy, and we tend to want to protect or preserve art. So when we’re creating art for outdoor spaces, we really have to rethink the materials that we use, and their presentation. What was that process like of having to put your art outside for a different kind of public engagement?
J: There were so many factors to consider. It was a little challenging because I feel like the appeal of the rugs is the texture–having something that's like, ohh, can I touch it? Yeah, really having a focus on that sense of touch. But you're right. I can't put a rug outside because a) the elements and the weather; b) people can steal things. That was another thing we needed to think about. We can chain something to this pole, but someone could cut the chain. So not only is it working against the weather, but we're also working against all of these other factors.
Human nature…
J: Yeah, people see something and they just want it. We want people to enjoy it for the time that it’s here…But it was a conversation between me and the curator. Her name is Alexis. And we’re like, OK, what should we do? What if we make these vinyl stickers, these translucent stickers? We can stick them on one side, they’re not that expensive, and you can’t just take them. You have to peel them off. It was so fucking hard to put them on. Like if someone can peel that off, you can just have it. It’s fine. So yeah, it could be translucent. With the glass panes, you can see it from either side so it’s accessible to people walking around and accessible to people going to the Pier-8 event that’s happening […] I feel like having it where you can see it from around gives it back its tactile feeling. Whereas printing it on paper and then putting it in a frame loses so much dimension. Even though it’s scanned, you can see the texture.
I’m also thinking about how they’re on window panes. Typically, with a rug, light doesn’t go through. But with stickers that are translucent, the play of light coming through probably affected the colour or that visual sensory aspect.
J: I think that’s what balanced it out from having it just be a scanned rug. It tipped the scale to make it a little bit cooler. It brings back that texture and that grit like a real rug in your hand feels. Then, I was thinking about how I’m making these rugs that are for inside your house, and then I make rugs that are out in public space, and now I’m taking the rugs that I made for public space and scanning them for an even bigger, outside public space. It’s taking this rug so far removed from its function.
That’s something that you’d never done before, right?
J: Yeah.
Which makes me think of your Instagram bio: “trust the process.” But, I’m curious, what does it mean for you to trust something that is always becoming? There were so many steps to just figuring out the logistics of how to transform this rug into vinyl stickers. So either in this case, or in general.
J: I think that's the fun part of trusting the process. You can have a plan, and then it can be something completely different. It could also be something really cool that only would have happened because of those series of events that were before it. Trust the process. When I graduated art school, I was…I was feeling really lost, as we all are when we graduate.
That’s why I haven’t. I keep going back so I never have to face that, “who am I?” moment [laughter].
J: You hear about it, and you’re like, yeah, yeah, whatever, people are always lost in school, but then you feel it. You're like fuck, why did I go to art school? What was I thinking? What do I do with art? I was having a little existential crisis, as we all do.
As we all do.
J: I was like, God dammit. Then I was like, you know, even throughout school, I'd be making things, and I'd be like, damn, this is really fucking ugly. I'd be making this picture like, this is not gonna turn out. But you gotta keep going because you gotta make a deadline. Then I would finish it, and I'm like, you know what? I kind of like this. I feel like life after you graduate school is kind of like that too. You’re like, ohh, why did I go to art school? What did I do? Then you're like, OK, I'm just gonna keep going with it and hope it works out. Then I don't know, it usually works out in some way or another. Maybe not in the way that you thought it would. But it does. I don't know. I just trust the process. I kind of like that, you know? It's a good reminder, and it’s cliche, and you hear it all the time, but it just felt so important at that time of my life. Things work out. You have to just believe that things happen for a reason. I'm making choices, but I'm also following this path that's for me, hopefully. Hopefully there’s some direction that I don’t have to be in charge of […] Even failures lead to other things. I feel like the best advice I ever got in art school was, whatever idea you have, just do it. Even if it’s going to be bad, just do it. Because you might make this really ugly painting and never look at it again, then in 20 years, find it, and be like, ohh, I kind of like this one little aspect or these two colours beside each other, and it might inform something else. Everything always informs something else. You think it doesn’t matter, and you’re like, oh, whatever. But there’s always something that’s like no, save this for later. That’s why I write everything down in my notebook. Every idea, I’m like, write this down. If I don’t use this now, one day.
bird’s nest in the studio window
But I also love what you're saying: “everything always informs something else”, which is this duality that I noticed in your window rugs. There’s always something there and here or out and in. It’s not that you're thinking necessarily in binary ways, but it seems as if something is always informing something else. Or if not informing, is in conversation with, or interested in the other side of something in terms of perspective or composition. What are your thoughts on that in terms of your window rug pieces? Do you feel that’s something that you're thinking of when you're creating?
J: For all those window pieces, it was kind of leaning towards the work I was doing for my thesis when I was graduating, and I was really interested–well, first of all, I would take walks and look into people's houses. You know, that’s just how it is. The blinds are open, you’re asking me to look, right?
Right. When it’s dark out, but the blinds are open, making it so easy to see…
J: I can see everything. Looking into people's private lives, their homes, or private space, it's this intersection between private and public life. I was interested in that. Then I was thinking about, you know, my mom's side is Italian, so I’m half-Italian. And I feel like a lot of Italian culture is image. It's: what are they gonna think of that? What are people gonna say about this? My grandparents have this whole upstairs of their house that they don't touch. It's the showroom living room.
Yes! It’s the formal room where no one sits, but it takes up half of the house [laughs].
J: And for what? So people can come in and be like, “Oh, they have a nice couch. Oh, they have nice things.” But we don’t touch any of that. So I was thinking about people using their homes, their private spaces, but also kind of putting them on display by having their windows open. It's dark outside and the lights are on. Well, I can't look away. The lights are on. It’s a spotlight, looking into these really private parts of people's lives. I was really interested in that. Then with the window rugs, I thought it was kind of cool because are you on the inside or the outside? Is this looking in or out at something?
I guess I always thought that you're looking out, but maybe you're in the background and someone's looking at you.
J: It could be either way. Again, about that duality, it could be either/or, and either/or means something different but also the same.
And either/or means there’s so much room for interpretation. There are two perspectives, but you can interpret which perspective you’re looking through, which I think is super interesting.
J: I was reading this article once when I was writing my thesis, and it was about the difference between windows and doors. With a door, it’s either closed or it’s open. If it's closed, you can't really see the other side. If it's open, then there's this joint of space. With windows, it's a joining of space, but they’re not open. You can have your window shut and look outside but still have that separation.
I think that oftentimes, when we think about binaries, we think of restriction—this either/or. But again, I think in having duality, there’s so much room for exploration or…
J: Flux.
Yeah. Flux.
J: It doesn’t have to be so strict. One side or the other. It can go between both. It’s like window purgatory.
That can be the name of your next show.
J: Write that shit down [laughter]...I do feel like [windows] inform a lot of my work, unintentionally. I mean, I am really inspired by architecture, like houses. That core work that I was working with about image and perspective, in or out, I think still informs my work now which is really cool. I do feel I’m kind of developing out of that, but it’s still a part of the foundation of how I work which is kind of cool. Everything is a building block. You don’t just move on to the next thing. It’s not like…windows? I don’t know about windows.
There’s a cornerstone [laughter].
J: Yeah. It’s fun to just play around sometimes. And I feel that will be fun, curating for Durand now. I get to kind of do what I want. I get to make the themes, and it’ll be a fun exercise of: if I could just make one piece that has to do with a theme, like for Cowboy, what would that be? Matchbox. Matches feel so cowboy.
They do feel cowboy. I’m reminded of DreamWorks, and the boy on the moon fishing [pointing to the matchbox rug]. Something about those fishing lures over there and then this…
"Need a Light?" by Julianna Biernacki. Tufted acrylic yarn on monks cloth. Cowboy at Durand Coffee.
J: It’s all coming together! He’s on the moon [laughter].
I wonder if he caught anything, that boy on the moon. Maybe some stars.
J: What’s that saying they say in elementary school? “Shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” That boy on the moon [laughter].
That’s a great place to stop.
J: Inspiring.
Yeah, feeling inspired.
photos by Steph
Steph Valeska is a scholar, teacher, and co-founder of junq magazine. She spends a lot of time thinking and writing about conviviendo at The Brain Bar.
