How do we understand our place in the world?  What signs help us navigate the complexity of everyday life?  How do larger patterns and systems intersect with our individual experience of an environment?

Can we read our future in the mirror of the places we build?

My work as a visual artist draws strongly from the urban environment in which I live. When looking at the city, I see a living organism, one that must perpetually change, weather, and reinvent itself in our image, to accommodate our growth and ambitions.   We are living in the landscape of our own making, and the strange, uneven results of this creation constantly raise questions in my mind. On my daily circuit from home to work to studio, I find the visual cues that often become my subjects.  I work from snapshots, sketches, maps, and sometimes memory, and I often reorganize or abstract certain information for emphasis and clarity. 

The aerial perspective in particular has been a source of inspiration and an ongoing challenge to me.  From the god-like perspective of the air, one looks down on the patterns of growth and development that mark our human interventions on the land with startling clarity.  This intersection of natural and man-made shapes is one intriguing aspect I have explored in numerous works. By isolating certain elements and images in this rich vein, I hope to raise questions in the viewer’s mind about their relationship to the place they inhabit. 

Julia Ricketts
2004