By: Finnian Boyle and Viivi Koistinen | Photographs by Chelsie Walsman
Bio
Julian Jamaal Jones is a multidisciplinary artist, a designer and an educator, raised and currently living in Indianapolis. His vibrant, abstract quilts build on a language of African American quilting.
Intro
Julian Jamaal Jones’ work presents a gentle upheaval of his own experience, enlarged and veiled by his use of abstraction. He manufactures abrupt tapestries; colorful, abstract, gestural, and immediate.
Julian called us from his front porch in Indianapolis, Indiana. It must have been the very early days of December, and he was only wearing a sweater.
For Julian, artistry appears to be an imminent thing. From cakes and pastries to fashion photography to quilting, these are all instruments for a carefully cultivated want to devise and to convey. His works stand in a language that can’t be accurately translated, but is both a compositional venture and a testament to narrative.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
We saw you were in Detroit recently as a guest lecturer at the College of Creative Studies.
I was supposed to go, but I ended up doing a Zoom call. However, I’m very familiar with Detroit. I went to Cranbrook. I was there for two years, until I got a teaching opportunity here in Indianapolis.
Where are you teaching at the moment?
I’m currently at Purdue University.
Can you tell us a little about that?
I'm teaching a constructive textile course: how to crochet, how to knit, weaving…. I primarily specialize in quilting, but I’ve taught quilt blocking, hand sewing, just the basics of textiles. Then I’m teaching a digital color photography course - kind of an intro to color photography, teaching the students the elements of their camera. So, the mediums of photography and fiber, really. At some point, I would love to teach courses on things like painting, color theory, composition and abstraction.
How do you feel when you look back on your own work as a student?
I think my graduate school work was the start of my aesthetic and style. Looking at it now, my work has definitely matured a bit. In graduate school, I was just really trying to figure out my artistic voice. But I still reflect on those pieces, for inspiration. Some of them are still among my favorites.
We were talking to Taylor Childs a couple of weeks ago. She also went to Cranbrook, she also works with textile. Taylor says everyone has a relationship with textile, whether they realize it or not. How has your relationship with textile realized itself? How has it evolved?
Believe it or not, I didn’t start as a fiber artist. My first medium of love was photography. I started off in fashion photography: working with models, working with stylists, going to boutiques and stores and looking at clothes, carefully picking out outfits for photoshoots. I think that was my proper introduction to fashion, and to textiles. Later, it grew into more of a fine arts practice, quilts that connected back to my family traditions. My grandmother was a quilter, my great-grandmother was a quilter.
But, I have been fascinated with clothing and style since childhood. I was a big fan of America’s Top Model, with Tyra Banks. My grandma had Vogue magazines at her house, I’d always look at those.
You also danced as a child. Do you feel like there’s some sense of movement or physicality that stems from your childhood still present in your work?
Absolutely. I don’t dance now, but I still have an affinity for choreography. It’s something I think about and go back to time and time again. This might sound crazy, but I’m being completely honest with you. Abby Lee Miller, the dance mom show. I don’t like how she talked to her students, but I still go back to that to see how she choreographed, how she put things together.
I watch a lot of hip hop music videos, partly because I like the element of movement. I’m interested in the choreography. I definitely do see that part of it within my gesturing, it’s part of the movement in my pieces.
You worked in bakeries in Chicago after high school, right? Are culinary arts something you still lean on for influence?
I actually went to culinary school right out of high school. I studied pastry arts for two years and culinary arts for another two. I studied abroad in France for four months, at a pastry school in Paris.
I came back to the States, started working in bakeries, and didn’t like it. I still bake for my family, but it’s not something I want to do professionally. That being said: culinary arts and baking are elements to my artistry: color, buttercream, fondant, cakes, all of it. I went from pastries to fashion to fiber art.
You’ve also studied photography extensively. How does that materialize in your other craft?
You’ve mentioned the importance of composition.
Composition is key in photography, lighting is key in photography, and your subjects in general. Those are things I always go back to when constructing my quilt work. I think with my experience - my extensive training in photography -, it’s something I possess naturally; I go with my gut feeling. I know what looks good and what doesn’t.
My quilts do reflect my style in photography.
How do you balance structure and improvisation in your artistic process?
I feel like, in quilting there’s a style everyone goes for: the same look, the same florals, the same solid colors, the patterns. Coming into fiber arts, I definitely wanted to break that. I wanted to make my own language, my own verbiage, to make people really nervous.
Going from the institution into the professional realm, exhibiting my work more, has definitely changed my mindset.
When I came on the scene, I thought, I’m not following the rules of quilting. I’m doing exactly what I want to do. I’m adding my abstract sketches, I’m making my own textiles. My first exhibition at Playground Detroit was all black quilts. I think I came on the scene with a vision of what I wanted to see and how I wanted my work to come across to an audience. At heart, I’m definitely a perfectionist.
That’s my advice for my students now. Go into a project with a vision. You might execute it, it might not come out the way you want it to: you change it, you alter it.
In your quilts, you use abstraction to explore very complicated concepts of Black identity, culture, heritage and family, even legacy. How did you come to turn to abstraction specifically?
I’ve always been fascinated with abstraction. As a child, I would go to the art museum with my parents, and only really be interested in the abstract sections. Representational art has always felt very boring to me. No slight to those artists, there are many I look up to and admire. I just think abstraction is different. It’s a challenge to witness and to work in, to formulate a style within.
For me… let me go back. My parents were very protective of me and my brothers. There were certain things we couldn’t look at on TV growing up. We were raised in religion. As an adult, I feel like I still want a lot of my stories to be protected. I don’t want to give all my information out to the world to judge or to make a mockery of. Abstraction is a way for me to have a protective layer on top, but to still say my stuff.
In graduate school I wasn’t naming my pieces, but now that I’m working in abstraction more I want to guide the audience, to give them some sense of what I’m referencing. It took me a long time to come to that realization, that I have to, to give somebody something. Not that I get offended if someone comes to one of my exhibitions and doesn't get what I’m saying at all. I think my intention as an abstract artist is to create in a way that allows the audience to formulate their own associations.
You had an exhibition recently, at the Tube Factory in Indianapolis. You described it as a reflection of the Black church experience in the 1990s.
Like I said, we were raised in church, we went to Sunday school, went to Bible study. As an adult, and especially since Covid, church is more virtual. People don’t go to church as much. It just doesn’t feel like it used to.
That’s what I was thinking about in this exhibition: expressing my feelings, this sense of nostalgia. From my perspective, the music, the gospel music, is not how it was. In the churches I went to as a child, they would wear choir robes. It was packed.
I never thought I would be speaking about religion through my artistic practice. It never came to mind. It kind of just hit me one night, to just do it and to see what people think.
I’m actually working on another exhibition, which is opening in January at Wabash college.
I wanted it to be the last of the religion, to wrap up, take a break from it and to regroup and get my thoughts together. But the works are stunning. I love how they look. I’m very happy with the outcome. It’s definitely a step up from my exhibition this year. The works are larger in scale; they’re more experimentative. I’m adding more, I think I’m pushing myself conceptually with these pieces, playing with shape - which I didn’t really do before, I was playing it safe.
How do you interact with the broader art marketplace? What do you collect? How do you collect?
Some artists have suggested trading work - Detroit artists that I love -, so I can start building my personal art collection through that. I think collecting art in that way is great for building confidence and for meeting people that you might feel are unapproachable otherwise. Artists that are represented by major galleries often seem intimidating - like big-time, big deal artists -, but I’ve gotten to know some that are very nice, very open.
Can you think of a recent experience with art that especially affected you?
I think I’m paying more attention to African American men that work in abstraction. So, Eric Mack, Sam Gilliam, Stanley Whitney, Paul Verdell. I’m looking at how they translate their voice into abstraction. Patrick Alston. He has a show at Library Street with Heather Day. I love that body of work, I love how he talks about abstraction and his style, and how he uses line and paint.
I think it’s very important to really reference and to look up to artists that are working in the same way you’re working, to look at your surroundings.
What are you reading right now?
I just started “ART & FEAR: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking” by: David Bayled & Ted Orland.
Can you name a place that makes you excited to leave the house?
My art studio, that's my sanctuary. That's a place for me to create and get away from my house and get the creative juices flowing. That's typically where I'm at.
To purchase or view more of Julian Jamaal Jones' work, download the ArtClvb app on mobile.