Julia Kunin

Detail of 'Vasarely's Ballet," 2022
“I use luster glazes in the sculptures to emphasize the sense of uncontrolled growth. They are a little bit vulgar almost, vulgar and beautiful at the same time. Making this work, where you don’t know what the end product is going to be, is kind of an addiction.”

-Julia Kunin
B. 1961, VERMONT

LIVES AND WORKS IN BROOKLYN, NY

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detail of Copper Machine Dreams, 2017, ceramic

Ever since completing my undergraduate education, I have structured my life in order to be an artist. I have always held “day jobs”, reserving the summers for complete immersion in the studio, whether that be through a residency or something I have organized on my own. I waitressed when I was in Houston as a Core- Fellow in 1985, and began teaching part time then, and was an artist’s assistant for Lynda Benglis when I first moved to New York in 1987. I also worked as a part time secretarial assistant at Newsweek Magazine from 1987 - 1996, and spent many years as a temp, word processing. Since 1997 I have concentrated purely on teaching as my day job, and am currently head of the art department at the Allen-Stevenson School, where I work four days a week. Most recently I also began teaching a graduate ceramic sculpture class at Pratt Institute.

I received my BA in 1984 from Wellesley College, graduating Summa Cum Laude with honors in sculpture. In 1993 I received my MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. I live in Brooklyn, New York where I have a studio, and I spend summers in Pecs, Hungary, where I conduct research and develop new work. Learning languages is one of my passions that I have been able to combine with art making, and studying Hungarian has been an exciting challenge and a necessity.

--Juilia Kunin
Photograph by Grace Roselli

Julia Kunin lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Pecs, Hungary where she conducts research and develops new work. She received her BA from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She has exhibited extensively in Europe as well as the United States. Kunin was a Fulbright Scholar to Hungary in 2013. She is the recipient of a 2010 Trust for Mutual Understanding Grant to Hungary. In 2008 she received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and had a residency at Art Omi. In 2007 she received the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Artist Residency. Fellowships have included: MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire; Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York; Vermont Studio Center, Vermont; Core Program at the Glassell School of Art, Houston, Texas; and Skowhegan Residency, Maine. Her work has been featured in ARTnews, House and Garden, the Brooklyn Rail, and in Harmony Hammond’s book Lesbian Art in America (Rizzoli, 2000). Kunin’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Applied Art and Design, Frankfurt, Germany; Sculpture Center, New York; and Brattleboro Museum, Vermont. Her work is part of the permanent collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; German Leather Museum, Offenbach, Germany; the Margulies Collection, Miami, Florida; and the Museum of Art and Design, New York.
Julia Kunin in Conversin in Clay: Ceramics from the LACMA Collection

LACMA, Los Angeles, CA, 2022-23

One of the earliest and best-preserved areas of artistic production across the globe, ceramics remain a vital field of expression and experimentation into the present. Conversing in Clay: Ceramics from the LACMA Collection explores the medium through 14 case studies, placing historical works in visual dialogue with contemporary examples to illuminate symbolic meanings, technical achievements, and resonances throughout time. The exhibition examines how artists working today relate to international artistic traditions of the medium, both through deliberate references to the past and by engaging with aspects of clay’s materiality that have inspired makers over the centuries. Drawing from LACMA’s wide-ranging collections, the exhibition also highlights many recent contemporary acquisitions, including works by Nicholas Galanin, Steven Young Lee, Courtney Leonard, Roberto Lugo, Mineo Mizuno, Elyse Pignolet, Paul Scott, and more.

In "Indigo Garden," Julia Kunin evokes amphibious environments with slip-cast rocks and snails submerged in pooled, iridescent glaze. She has long been inspired by the macabre tradition of casting once-living specimens pioneered by French Renaissance polymath Bernard Palissy and widely elaborated over the centuries. For this body of work, she was also entranced by images of the historical iridescent ceramics produced by the internationally acclaimed Zsolnay ceramics manufactory in Hungary. While the firm guards the recipes of its materials, the Brooklyn-based artist gained permission to produce work in the factory. Her richly textured surfaces intensify the scintillating effects of Zsolnay’s eosin glaze.

excerpt from Conversin in Clay: Ceramics from the LACMA Collection

Installation images © Museum Associates/LACMA

LACMA
"Indigo Garden" (far right) in "Conversing in Clay: Ceramics from the LACMA Collection," 2022-23, image © Museum Associates/LACMA
Works
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Videos
- JULIA KUNIN IN THE STUDIO with MoMA
  How to hand-build with clay | Ceramic technique tutorial August 12, 2024
  In this tutorial, learn ceramics hand-building techniques, including how to make a pinch pot, coils, score and slip, wedging, slabs, press molds, and relief. Artist Julia Kunin demonstrates how to make a free-standing sculpture with clay, from building a foundation to surface decoration. Along the way, she refers to artists who inspire her, including Eva Zeisel, Hannah Wilke, Ken Price, Umberto Boccioni, Oskar Schlemmer, Sergio Asti, Betty Woodman, Alberto Giacometti, and Alina Szapocznikow.
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