Julie Sevilla Drake has been an artist and a stitcher since a young age. She is mostly known as an art quilter, but also creates painted collages, acrylic paintings, and oil paint mixed with cold wax. All of her works tell a story.
How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?
I have been an artist and a stitcher since childhood. It seems I was always drawing, painting, playing with Play-Doh, singing and dancing, sewing doll clothes, or concocting marginally delicious goodies in my sister’s Easy-Bake Oven.
My mom sewed most of our clothes, plus she loved crewel embroidery. I remember at age 5, finding out I had a broken wrist when I couldn’t hold an embroidery hoop in my left hand. I retired from my “real” job in my 50’s, and that’s when I finally found time & energy to return to making visual art.
However, I consider my entire career—and life— to be an evolving work of art.
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How does your environment influence your creativity?
I grew up free-range in a small town, one of four rowdy kids. Ours was a rambunctious household chock-full of books, music, puns, friends, and laughter.
Unrestrained by four walls, our smarts and fun spilled outdoors into neighborhoods, fields, the library, the schools, and the woods. I still spend many hours outside each day—both in quiet meditation and in active play: hiking, biking, skiing, backpacking, and just being.
As an adventurer, I am entranced and excited by life’s mess, mayhem, mischief, and mystery. I can find wildness everywhere I look.
What different creative media do you use in your work?
I’m mostly known as a quilter. I dye cotton fabrics and have created quite a stash of colors to work with.
I make painted paper collages, using acrylic gouache paints and watercolor papers.
I paint with acrylics, preferring matte acrylics to glossy.
I also love to paint with oil paint mixed with cold wax, a mixture that’s as thick as cake frosting and is spread on the surface with a squeegee, not a brush.
When you prepare for a creative session, how do you decide which media to use?
It really depends on what I feel like making, if I’ve committed to a time-sensitive project, and how many hours I have to work.
It takes a while to get into the zone, and if there’s going to be a mess to clean up afterward, like with painting or dyeing, I need to set aside more time.
If I have just and hour or so, I can go into my quilt studio and sew a few seams, do some hand-stitching, or just play with color and shapes on my design wall.
How did you get started working with textiles?
I sewed with scraps when I was young. As well as making doll clothes, I also embroidered just about anything. I liked to decorate stuff.
In the 1970’s, it was common to sew your own clothes because it was less expensive than buying ready-made. Now the opposite is true, with fast, cheap fashion tempting everyone everywhere.
I was a blue-jean kid, and I would modify my jeans: adding embroidered patches; inserting fabric wedges into straight-legs to make them bell-bottoms; making old jeans into cut-off shorts or skirts.
Later, my best friend had a subscription to Vogue, so we tried our hand at sophisticated fashion. But perhaps I went too far–I flunked Home Economics because I made a nightgown out of pink satin and lace, too risqué in the flannel-and-rickrack Midwest!
Do you do series work? How does that affect your approach?
I do sometimes, but honestly, only because artists are supposed to. After getting such a late start at being a full-time artist, I feel the press of time. I have so much to say!
However, one artist I know says all his work is a series. Because of course it is. Doesn’t every work lead to the next one? Good answer, right?!
Does your work have stories to tell?
Oh, heck yeah. I’m a poet and storyteller, so how can that not leak into my visual art?
My work is abstract but suggests characters and action. Usually, my titles tell some of the story.
Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing?
I dive right in.
I grew up fairly financially strapped, was on my own at age 16, and remained pretty broke until my mid-thirties. What this led to in my life was the ability to make quick decisions to survive.
Fortune sometimes meant those decisions were smart, and that they worked. My art process is the same.
Do you have a dedicated space for creating? If so, what does it look like?
I have an amazing studio! We ordered and built a kit barn during the pandemic, then modified it to include lots of windows and an upstairs gallery. Now my husband uses half of the barn for his art and I get the other half.
Working across many different media, how do you organize all of your creative supplies?
Lots and lots of rolling carts and drawers.
Scraps. Saver? Or be done with them?
I use my fabric scraps all the time. Because I freehand cut my fabrics to piece my quilts, the off-cut can be as fascinating as the shape in the quilt. I often start a quilt with scraps. Because I dye my own fabrics, they are precious to me.
Are you a “finisher”? How many UFOs do you think you have?
Yes, and no, and several.
How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?
I have many, many works in progress at the same time, both paintings and quilts.
Sometimes it’s necessary to push and push a vague idea until it pulls me in, maybe returning to it again after letting it sit for a while.
But my collages are pretty much worked start-to-finish in just a few sessions.
Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?
It’s all about form and content. Usually my work starts with form: a color, or a shape. Then I react to that, and then to that, and so on.
Once I have a feeling of what it’s becoming, I can engage with the content, the story, of the piece.
Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?
I love ideas and creating, but my execution often feels clunky. Too often I quit (out of boredom? frustration?) before I’ve really nailed it.
Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?
Play, joy, rowdiness, humor, the wild and, once in a while, the calm.
How has your creativity evolved over the years? What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?
Sometimes I see art that I love, and I say to myself “I want to do that.” Sometimes I see art I love and just leave it at that. Sometimes the barrier is simply the gear involved.
As an outdoorswoman, I know gear, I have gear, I often need to pass gear along. That experience leads me to ask questions like “do I really want a pottery wheel, a welding torch, a weaving loom?”
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
Do the work and get out of your own way.
Where can people see your work?
Right now: Until December 2024, I have a solo show of quilts, paintings and collages at the Perry and Carlson Gallery in Mt Vernon, Washington. www.perryandcarlson.com/gallery.
I have two quilts in the SAQA Washington Traveling exhibition “Inspiration/Exploration”
I have a quilt in Color Improvisations 3, which opened in Germany and will be coming to the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska in March 2025.
Also in March 2025, I will have three quilts at Museo Gallery in Langley, Washington. https://museo.cc/
Plus, I usually participate in the Anacortes Open Studio Tour in early September each year. And upon request, I welcome visitors to my studio if I’m available.
I also have a website where I try to keep up to date with news and upcoming exhibitions: www.juliesevilladrake.com
Interview posted November 2024
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