"My mobile sculpture and woodblock print series explore the theme of relocation and resettlement as a universal, physical, and personal part of human history and experience. Inspired by personal experiences, I layer imagery created with fabric, paper, wire and wood to convey a multi-layered sense of place, belonging and time.

I recently completed a two week residency in the letterpress studio at Penland School of Craft in NC, working on woodblock and photopolymer relief prints. I stitch, collage, and layer the prints dimensionally to make unique works and to generate sculptural ideas about space and form.

Currently, I am collaborating with the Scottish/American poet Audrey Henderson, working from shared conversations about the places, imagery and language that trigger our imaginations and working processes. Some of these works will be in the exhibit “Breath and Matter: Artists and Poets at Boston Sculptors Gallery” July 18- August 12 2018. As part of this collaboration I have begun making shaped, layered and stitched paper reliefs with printmaking and sculptural techniques and intend to incorporate fabricated metal and wood elements."

-Julia Shepley

What do we accumulate looking at quiet matter when it is sunlit.

My sinews are worshipful, my blood full of happy oxygen

From “Morning” by Audrey Henderson

I can tell you that the road is gone. I can tell you

that the houses are gone, and the gas station, but you will

not understand until you step on the tarmac and it crumbles

from “Terminus” by Audrey Henderson

Art review by by Keith Powers of WBUR in North Shore Sunday Magazine : Julia Shepley presents thought-provoking series of small works at Montserrat

Migrant #3’ by Julia Shepley; Woodcut collage, stitching on paper and fabric

Ten apparently simple woodcut collages are enough to tell a story.

Julia Shepley’s “Sequential Prints,” on view now at Montserrat College of Art’s Schlosberg Gallery, seem at first glance to be quiet, monochromatic studies. Nocturnal in temperament, almost entirely blue/black with only hints of yellow or brown, these small works are mixed media: collaged wood cut prints, gently layered with paper, stitching, and diaphanous mesh fabric.

The images are not figurative, but not entirely abstract either. Call it gestural. Some hints recur: landscapes along the water — a dock, a boat, a jetty — sometimes a residence, most of it with a temporary feeling.

There are no human figures. The hangings — all small — have three dimensions, but they’re not architectural. The gauze that creates depth only enhances the surface, not building on it

Despite the title there is no sequence, at least not a directly narrative one. Most of the works come from her “Migrant” series — #1, #2, etc., not in order — with the expansive political implications that title implies, but without any further overt exploration into the theme.

Meaning falls secondarily to the artistic quality. These works are gorgeously, intentionally crafted, rich in visual interest. Many three-dimensional hanging works inhabit a halfway-house of artistic intention — not quite seeming like paintings, not looking like sculpture either. These works feel organic — like they could not be anything else but what they are.

The search for meaning, though not directly offered, is still irresistible. The temporary quality of the structures in some of the Migrant series can be quickly recognized: summer homes, cottages on stilts, unmoored boats, abandoned jetties to nowhere. An unfocused feeling to the images also creates a mood.

The stitched gauze casts shadows on the back surface — shadows that become another medium, like the woodcut print, or the paper, or the stitching. Intentionally marking the surface, the shadows etch their way into the visual plane, obscuring the background, but also adding to its texture.

The nocturnal quality — just hinted at — coupled with the lack of human presence, and the dark inked hues of the woodcuts, is either peaceful or unsettling, depending solely on the viewer.

Shepley teaches as an adjunct at Montserrat, works in Somerville’s Brickbottom Building, and is represented by the Boston Sculptors Gallery. Her earlier works — some have been seen locally at the Rocky Neck Cultural Center, in a previous Montserrat group show, and at the Decordova, as well as many Boston and area galleries — embrace sculpture, drawing, prints, and mobiles, some overlapping.

The Schlosberg Gallery — really just a hallway — can be a terrific venue to take in a small show. Especially like this, when a small show has a lot to say.

Upcoming exhibitions currently include:

Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston MA, Breath and Matter, Poetry and Sculpture exhibition (July-August 2018)

2018-Trustman Gallery, Simmons College, Boston MA, Solo exhibition of sculpture and prints (September-October 2018);

2019- Boston Sculptors Gallery. Boston, MA, Solo exhibit (May-June 2019)

Recent exhibits include:

Chandler Gallery, Cambridge MA, “Prints as Sculpture”, Sculptural prints

Boston Sculptor’s Gallery, Boston MA, “HeArt”, Sculpture

Carol Schlosberg Alumni Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, “Julia Shepley, Sequential Prints”

Cotuit Center for the Arts, Cotuit, MA, “Marking time, 70th Anniversary of the Boston Printmakers”

Wheaton Biennial, Norton, MA, “Printmaking Reimagined”

New England Biolabs, “Explorations”, prints

Boston Sculptors Gallery, “Love/Lust” Sculpture drawing, prints