Modern proper with a dash of nature
Julianna Swaney of Oh My Cavalier! tells us about her love of printmaking
By Genevieve Diesing
Published: September 25th, 2007 | 6:26pm
Julianna Swaney is only 24 years old, but her delicate drawings evoke the spirit of a woman with insight into the distant past — specifically the Victorian era.
"[The Victorian era] was a time when I feel like there was a really strange mixture of interest in natural history as well as a real tendency toward romanticism of nature, animals, and death as well," said Swaney, whose sketches often depict surreal images of birds, lace, and insects somehow intersecting with women in Victorian dress.
"It's like people wanted nature in their lives, but only on their terms, cleaned up and civilized," she said.
The Michigan native, who graduated from Maine College of Art in 2005 with a BFA in Printmaking, is quickly making a name for herself with her wildly imaginative, whimsical drawings and silk screens.
Swaney often weaves the detail of lace or the fine lines of a butterfly's wing into an elaborate web with her pencil or embroidery needle, and contrasts it against wide open space. Rarely using color, the old-fashioned quality of her work consistently conveys something both somber and whimsical. Standout images are softly-penciled-portraits of elegantly-collared women with hairstyles seeming to extend into their own intricate, insect-inhabited universes.
"I love the idea of bees literally building a hive in someone's hair," Swaney said. "Think how warm and alive that would be, but dangerous too! For me, people with animals living in their hair is a kind of symbol of things in nature beyond our control, even though we might like to think that parts of nature are under our control or that we understand them fully. Our own hair itself is beyond our control, hair growth is one of those things that your body does without you noticing."
Swaney's drawings sell from around $26 to $120 at the online crafter's store etsy.com, and have been popular enough for her to support herself solely from their profits. Swaney also creates embroidery, cards, journals, and pins, all which she features on etsy.com and her own Web site, ohmycavalier.com.
Besides her obvious intrigue in the Victorian era, Swaney counts her love of animals, as well as the work of Beatrix Potter, among her most dominant influences.
"I was obsessed with animals when I was little and my favorite thing in the world was to go to the zoo or natural history museum," Swaney said. "I also always spent a lot of time outside, and my family was really into bird watching, so all our vacations were centered around going to places where we could see new and rare birds, and I think because of this I leaned to love nature and care for the environment pretty early on," she said.
Swaney's interest in animals, similar to her fascination with the Victorian period, hearkens to a deeper observation about humanity.
"I'm interested in what giving animals our characteristics says about ourselves, and about how we see animals and nature," she said.
Though Swaney calls this stage of her career "a dream come true", she does wish to one day expand her professional repertoire.
"It's a goal of mine to try and do some stop motion animation work at some point, just something like a one minute movie," Swaney said. "I'd also like to do some installations and work bigger; I work very small right now — though that's probably because I have a very small space to work in."
Swaney said she would also like to learn to collaborate more with other artists, because now her work is "very solitary." Although Swaney's work has recently made it out of the realm of the online-marketplace and into several gallery shows, Swaney says the trajectory of her art has been slow and steady, and she hope it continues at that pace.
"I prefer to think that rather than having a high point, my career has taken lots of baby steps," she said."[I hope] it will continue to take lots of baby steps, because there is a lot left for me to do."
Issue #29
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