Though Julie Heller, left, no longer lives in the CWE, she has fond memories of growing up here. The Heller family lived on Lenox Place when the children were young; Julie graduated from Rosati-Kain at Newstead and Lindell. Her mother, Pat, and sister, Liz (Trinkie), are long-time CWE residents. Julie's current link to the neighborhood is an exhibition of her art, Collage Portraits, which is on view at the The Third Degree Glass Factory, 5200 Delmar, but only for a few more days. The exhibition ends this Tuesday, March 18. I apologize for the late notice and hope you can find time to go see it, it's fabulous!
Julie attended Bennington College on a full scholarship, but then decided to transfer to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She came home to earn funds to pay for the transfer and, like many young adults who lived in the neighborhood then, found work at Duff's cooking and waiting tables.
While studying at Pratt Julie was a live-in nanny and intern for designer Armando Milani. She returned to St. Louis temporarily because of an illness in the family and was hired as a graphic designer by the St. Louis Art Museum. Life back in St. Louis agreed with her so much that she remained at the Art Museum for almost 7 years. Following a brief stint at HOK (Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum), Julie started her own design business, Heller Studio.
Photo courtesy of the artist
It was a visit to a collectors' shop with her son Louis who collected baseball cards that prompted Julie to get back into making art. Her career was in commercial art, but one particular stamp she found at the shop set off, as she calls it, "this obsessive-compulsive thing I've done ever since. A stamp with a running horse looked like an eye, and I was immediately compelled to render the rest of the imagined face it was part of."
Examples of Julie's Collage Portraits, $300 to $650, currently on view at The Third Degree Glass Factory are shown above and following.
Photo courtesy of the artist
"Odd-Girl Tapestry" is not pictured, but the signage shown above describes many of the materials the artist uses to construct her work.
Photo courtesy of the artist
Photo courtesy of the artist
We've been friends of the fabulous Heller women for years. Pictured with Julie at the Glass Factory opening on Friday, February 21, are Patty Heller, left, and Liz (Trinkie), middle (a competitive cyclist I've blogged about in the past, read it here).
Julie has a permanent installation at Central Library (the main branch of the St. Louis Public Library, which you've been reading a lot about recently) – fourteen tapestries that hang in the main level in the Fine Arts Room and the Government, Business and Law Room, examples shown above and below.
In 2007 Julie designed a St. Louis history exhibit for the Old Post Office which was undergoing renovation. The developer suggested that the St. Louis Public Library should have a similar exhibit, and introduced Julie to the library's Executive Director, Waller McGuire. McGuire loved the idea but was concerned that the library's tall bookshelves left very little eye-level exhibition space (the ceilings on the main level soar to 24 feet). He left it up to Julie to develop a plan to bring visual aspects of the library's holdings out onto the walls.
A short time later, while wandering through Kansas City's Nelson Atkins Museum, Julie realized she could treat the library building as a grand residential environment rather than a commercial or institutional space, and therefore proposed tapestries for the walls. Coincidentally, a week later Julie learned that the library's famed architect, Cass Gilbert, had intended for tapestries to hang in the building's alcoves.
At Waller McGuire's suggestion Julie worked with library staffer Brian Novak to select much of the imagery that is portrayed on the canvas panels. In Julie's words: "The collages include visual rhymes and other links between otherwise unrelated aspects of each of the two-rooms' collections," (Fine Arts & Government and Business & Law). The artist hopes to find funding to add 7 or 8 additional tapestries in each of two additional rooms at Central Library, Literature, Entertainment & Biography, and Social Studies.
Julie Heller's Collage Portraits, $450 to $650, at Third Degree Glass Factory, 5200 Delmar, Mon. – Sat. 10 to 5. For more information, contact Julie at Heller Studio, (314) 574-6958.
Nicki,
You packed a lot of information into a relatively small space … thank you so much for your generous review of Julie’s show. And is it too far-fetched to think that her childhood in the CWE has some bearing on the work ?
Patty Heller
Proud Mama
Julie’s work draws you in to inspect the detail and wonderment of how she conceived such ideas. To have her work displayed so prominately in The St. Louis Main Library is a tribute to her artistry.
Don’t miss the show at The Third Degree Glass Factory and own of piece of your own.