Visiting Artist Lecture at Connecticut College, September 16 at 4:30pm

I will be the Weismann Visiting Artist at Connecticut College this Fall with a lecture that is open to the public on Tuesday, September 16 from 4:30pm - 5:30pm in the Charles Chu Reading Room, Shain Library, 270 Mohegan Avenue, New London, CT.

The college has a 400 acre arboretum and this semester students are taking a course that combines Botany and Studio Art majors along with professors from both departments.

I’ll be speaking about Planting Utopia, The Botanist’s Mural and my studio practice in general.

Book signing + prints at Caramoor Saturday, September 20 at 1:30pm

I am looking forward to returning to the Herb Society of America’s 74th annual event held again this year at the gorgeous Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts.

I will be signing copies of my book “Planting Utopia” at 1:30pm as well as offering a rare chance to choose from limited edition prints in person. (Rain date is Sunday, Sept 21).

Two person show at Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Kent, CT April 26–June 8, 2025

Convert Light Energy – Julia Whitney Barnes and Sarah Morejohn

Dates: April 26 – June 8, 2025

Reception: Saturday April 26, 4 – 6 PM, public invited

Kenise Barnes Fine Art, 7 Fulling Lane, Kent, CT

Gallery hours: Thursday – Saturday 11:00 – 5:30, Sunday 12:00 – 4:00

 

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is honored to present an exhibition featuring hand-painted cyanotypes by Julia Whitney Barnes and drawings by Sarah Morejohn.

 

Julia Whitney Barnes is well known for her innovations in Cyanotype (camera-less photographic printing process) paintings. Whitney Barnes’ multi-step process includes harvesting flora (flowers and weeds being equally important) and combining several species into a single composition on photo sensitive cotton paper. After exposing the work to UV light, the resulting blue and white image is carefully hand-painted in many layers of watercolor, gouache, and ink, reanimating the vitality to the ghost of the objects. The artist is most interested in creating work that feels both beautiful and mysterious. Her artwork symbolizes resilience and are the records of the historical moment in which they were made, the process, and the artist’s will and interest in reasserting the presence of the image.

Whitney Barnes recently completed permanent public installations in The Botanist’s Mural, Vassar College/Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, Brooklyn Botanical: PS 253 (glass commission), Public Art in Public Schools/Percent for Art, Brooklyn, NY, Planting Utopia (interior installation), Albany International Airport, Albany, NY, Planting Utopia (interior and exterior installation), Shaker Heritage Society, Albany, NY. The artist has received the following honors and awards; Maker-Creator Research Fellowship, Winterthur Museum, Library & Garden (2024-25), Individual Artist Grant, (partnering with Shaker Heritage Society), New York State Council on the Arts (2018), Individual Artist Commission, NY State Decentralization Grant, Arts Mid-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY (2015), Gowanus Public Arts Initiative Grant (ArtsGowanus, The Old Stone House & District 39), Brooklyn, NY, Residency with Site-Specific Installation & Fellowship, Fjellerup I Bund I Grund, Fjellerup, Denmark, to name a few. Her work has been featured in Architectural Record, Times Union, The B Magazine, The Jealous Curator, Create Magazine, American Art Collector Magazine and many other publications and podcasts. Julia Whitney Barnes earned her BFA Fine Arts, Painting, Parsons the New School for Design, New York, NY and her MFA Fine Arts, Painting & Combined Media, Hunter College, CUNY, New York, NY. The artist lives and works in NY.

Sarah Morejohn’s fascination with non-linear patterns in nature drives her work. Through drawing, she considers how the relationship to nature is mediated both by objective understanding and subjective imagining of it. Considering the symbolic connections between nature, the body, and climate change Morejohn draws partial six-fold symmetries. By building a drawing line by line, sharp angles soften and wiggle, cell-like shapes minnow along while branches and flowers become a part of the flotsam disconnected from the earth. Figurative snow crystals become interlaced with one another and their environment, jumbling towards their own future transformations. Morejohn’s drawing process is intuitive and organic, artifacts of the process, drips, spills, flaws and mistakes are embraced. By collaging the imperfect pieces of her drawings together the work becomes a metaphor for the ever-changing uncertainties of life.

Sarah Morejohn’s work in in the collections of Heustis Hall, 1% for Art Oregon Arts Commission, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, Echo Laboratory, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, Ursell Laboratory, Physics Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, Project Art & Medical Museum, University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, Iowa City, IA. She was awarded residencies at Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, WY and Playa Art and Science Residency, Summer Lake, OR. Morejohn earned her BFA in Painting and Drawing, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. The artist lives and works in CA.

 

Please contact Lani Ming Holloway, Associate Director, Lani@kbfa.com, 860 560 3085 with inquires or to arrange a preview of the exhibition.

2025 Cyanotype Workshops

I will be leading various cyanotype workshops in 2025 including:

Sanborn Mills, Loudon, NH

5 Day Cyanotype Intensive
May 28 – June 1

On site lodging is limited and the venue can also help coordinate lodging
(including onsite camping)
Link for details and to enroll:
https://sanbornmills.org/workshops/cyanotype-intensive/

Hudson Valley/Chestnut Hill Farm, Saugerties, NY

2 or 3 Day Cyanotype Intensive
July 12 & 13 (optional July 14)

Limited on site lodging is available
Link for details and to enroll:
https://www.juliawhitneybarnes.com/cyanotype-workshops/july12-14

Herb Society of America/Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Katonah, NY

Intro to Cyanotype
Saturday, September 20 (with a rain date of Sunday, September 21)

Details to be announced this summer

Herb Society of America - 73rd Annual Herb Fair - Sept 14 10am–4pm

I am honored to be a presenter at the 73rd Annual Herb Fair on September 14th (rain date Sept 15) at Caramoor in Katonah, NY.

I will be giving a talk about my work and the cyanotype process as well as a participatory workshop from 10–11:30 am. Spaces are limited and preregistration is required through this link.

I will be on site until 4pm at the historic Rosen House signing books and offering limited edition prints as well as showing a few original “Planting Utopia” framed works.

For 73 years, the Herb Fair has celebrated the many ways that herbs enrich our lives and promoted the knowledge and use of herbs through educational programs, research, and community engagement. This one-day event will feature an extraordinary roster of makers and artisans as well as an extensive program of demonstrations, talks, and workshops from leading herb experts. We hope you will join us in celebrating 73 years of the Herb Fair’s legacy, uniting herb enthusiasts, artisans, and families in a shared appreciation for nature’s gifts on September 14, 10:00am – 4:00pm. Rain Date: Sunday, September 15

Glass Commission installed at PS253 Brooklyn/Public Art for Public Schools

I am overjoyed to share that my glass commission through Public Art for Publis Schools has just been installed at PS253 in Brighton Beach/Brooklyn, NY. I have been working on this project since 2021 and seeing everything come to life after years of work was incredibly satisfying.

Look out for my favorite moment when a pigeon flew in right as the hummingbird panel was being installed!

This piece is part of a collection that date back to the 1800s all across NYC and I am honored to now be a part of it.

PS 253 Addition, Brooklyn
Collection of the NYC Department of Education, Public Art for Public Schools

Commissioned by the NYC Department of Education, NYC School Construction Authority Public Art for Public Schools program, in collaboration with NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art program

"The Botanist's Mural" completed at Vassar College

“The Botanist’s Mural”
2024
Acrylic, graphite, and varnish on gypsum board 
Collection of Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY

“The Botanist’s Mural” draws inspiration from Vassar College's herbarium, which dates back to the school's founding in 1865. I incorporated 63 plants from the extensive collection of 15,000 specimens, including vascular plants, bryophytes, and algae housed in the Herbarium. I painted each plan to simultaneously resemble a hybrid of the pressed specimen and what the plan would have looked like while still growing in nature. All the painted flora has the illusion of specimen mounting adhesive strips as well as shadows to make them appear to be three-dimensional and taped directly to the wall. One of the artworks I admire whenever I visit The Loeb Museum is “The Botanist," painted by Alfred Ronner in 1875, which Vassar acquired a few years later in 1880 when it was still considered contemporary. I displayed a print of this piece in my studio while I worked on studies for my painting and pressed plants, as well as during my work on the mural. One of the most challenging aspects of the creation process was narrowing down my choices, knowing I could only include a limited selection. Each featured plant is based on one or more pressed specimens. For instance, since there were numerous varieties of Columbines cataloged, I chose several to include in the painting, including one from 1865. My selections aimed to showcase a diverse array of wild and cultivated plants found both locally and globally, highlighting how the collection at Vassar has grown over the years. A few of the plants depicted are ones I pressed myself so I could also be “The Botanist,” and I selected a specimen from the landscaping right outside this building to represent a plant from the summer of 2024, when the building and the mural were completed. I incorporated some of my favorite plants that had an impact on my early love of plants including the Lady Slipper Orchid, Poppies, and an abundance of ferns. Additionally, I subtly referenced Matthew Vassar’s background as a brewery owner by including a hops plant that I preserved from the Shaker Heritage Society garden, creating a connection between the mural and my “Planting Utopia” series and the herbarium of 150 medicinal plants I created as part of that project.

Many thanks to Mark Schlessman, Professor of Biology Emeritus who collected thousands of specimens in the herbarium over his decades at Vassar and who was a constant wealth of knowledge about all things herbarium, even after retirement. Thank you Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and Curator at The Loeb for bringing me on board with the project back in the early days of days of envisioning the building and providing feedback during the process. Special thanks to Bella Rose Wild and Carly Andrews for assisting in the hundreds of hours of executing this mural and Sean Hemmerle Photography for documenting the process and final mural.

Photography by Sean Hemmerle

"Tangled Up In Blue" at Carrie Haddad Gallery, March 1–April 21, 2024

I’m happy to share that my third show at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, NY opens this week, including selections from the Picturesque Botany and Nocturnal Nature series. You can preview the dozen included works here along with additional available works. Many thanks to Kurian & Cofor doing a splendid job crafting each frame.

Carrie Haddad Gallery, 622 Warren Street, Hudson, NY
Tangled Up in Blue

Artists' Reception: Saturday, March 2, 5-7 p.m.

March 1, 2024, through April 21, 2024

Carrie Haddad Gallery is pleased to present Tangled Up in Blue, an exhibition with an emphasis on the botanical. It features mixed-media works by Julia Whitney Barnes, Linda Newman Boughton, and Donise English; porcelain sculptures by Owen Mann; and paintings by James O’Shea. The exhibit opens on March 1 and will remain on view through April 21. All are welcome to attend the artists’ reception on March 2 from 5-7 p.m.

Using various paint mediums and cyanotype — a printing process that yields a blue image when a chemistry-coated surface is exposed to sunlight — the artist Julia Whitney Barnes conjures Edenic vignettes. Rooted in the work of women artists and scientists like Maria Sibylla Merian, Whitney Barnes’ compositions exalt plant life. “I approach each growing thing with equal importance, regardless of whether it is a weed, rare species, wildflower, or cultivated flower,” said Whitney Barnes in an interview with Create Magazine. She earned an MFA from Hunter College and has been widely exhibited, including a site-specific installation at the Shaker Heritage Site and Albany International Airport on view through Fall 2024.