Julie Umberger – Busy Hands

Scraps of paper, forgotten photographs, old magazines – these are the things that make Julie Umberger’s eyes light up. She knows she can take these bits and pieces and turn them into astounding creations. Each find is an opportunity to tell a story and spark inspiration for her viewers.

Julie graduated in 2009 with her BFA in studio art and spent many years expressing herself through painting. About a year and a half ago, feeling the desire to create in a new way, Julie had a conversation with her sister-in-law which jogged her memory of crafting collages as a child. What started as an exercise in kindergarten to practice her cutting skills – her mother would give her scraps of paper to practice on – became a passion for Julie when she discovered the joy of piecing paper scraps together to make collages. It wasn’t long before she was making personal collages to give to friends and family as gifts. “I was obsessed,” Julie remembers. 

Today, Julie has rediscovered her passion for “problem solving with paper,” as she calls it, but her work goes much deeper than that. It’s more than just fitting pieces together in a way that looks good. Julie’s love for images, especially of women, inspires feminist pieces that tell a story and give new life to forgotten images. Using photos from books and magazines that would have been discarded, Julie creates analog paper collages with layers of patterns and colors.

“I enjoy all steps of the process,” Julie explains. Paper collage art includes the collecting of the images, cutting, arranging, and completing a finished product. Working with paper presents unique challenges that digital collage artists don’t face. “I have to work with what I have,” Julie explains. 

Storytelling has become a big part of the process. With her Circus series, Julie began incorporating stories into each piece, imagining a background for each of the women portrayed, with these details adding dimension to the pages. “Stories are happening as I’m putting these figures in their new environments,” Julie says. It’s not that she sets out to tell a specific story with a photograph, but that as she creates the collage, it inspires a story that she feels compelled to include with the piece. While carefully cutting out the photographs, her busy hands connect to her mind, and she begins to wonder what this person was like off the page. 

The result is an authentic and compassionate work, both feminine and fierce, one that inspires the viewer to consider the fact that each face in a photograph has a background, a history, and a story all its own. 

While Julie hopes her art inspires personal interpretation from her viewers, she does find herself focusing on messages with each collection. Her Circus collection has a theme of female power and talent. The messages in the collection are both ironic and bold – a resurrection of photos from a time when females weren’t always viewed as powerful, the 1950s, combined with a bold declaration of their actual power. An homage to the beauty of bodies that haven’t been digitally retouched, Julie portrays these figures in daring feats in her Circus series, such as walking a tightrope. “I turned them into these talented women wielding power as opposed to just being beautiful people to look at,” Julie explains. In her Floral series, Julie honors the women by adorning them in colorful and ornate floral arrangements. 

Julie often works in themes, collections, and series. She recently created a Holiday series, and also has a Dessert series displayed and on sale at Custom Cake Studio in Old Town (3540 Massee Lane). She has plans for an upcoming series which will feature a Fungi collection. This series will have an opening show at the newly opened King Gallery (3211 Howard Avenue). Be on the lookout for upcoming details. 

Approachable, interesting, and personal, Julie intends for her pieces to invite a wide array of viewers. “It’s for everyone,” she explains.

Most of all, Julie desires to evoke an emotional response from her viewers with her art. 

As an artist, Julie hopes her unique contribution will inspire viewers to create their own art and gain an appreciation for what it can do for others. Her desire is to keep evolving and expand her work to create more displays to share with the community, whose response to her work has been generous. “I’m so flattered,” Julie says. 

Julie’s paper collage art can be seen on display at Heritage Art Center year round, as well as her instagram page @julieumbergerart where you can check out videos of the process she uses to create collages. To purchase, see photographs of her collections, find out about upcoming shows or just check out more art, visit julieumbergerart.com. 

By Natalie Downey