Artist Statement

Juliana Scherzer works with preserved leaves to create pieces that reference historical craft aesthetics and natural structures. Societal shifts towards anthropocentrism have rendered the outdoors a foreign space, but our existence within its network is logical and essential. With this notion, we can take steps towards conservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and understanding where we belong and our responsibility to environmental stewardship. Using these ideas, Juliana creates quilts with fallen leaves and ecoprinted fabric, collecting leaves and preserving them in a water and glycerin mixture, keeping the leaves indefinitely flexible. The leaves are cut, sewn, and woven like fabric into modern, asymmetrical botanical quilts. These quilts connect patterns of nature with traditional forms of craft and the human body, questioning the metaphysical meaning of a material, its purpose, and what happens when it is manipulated beyond its intention and form.

Juliana’s most recent work explores these topics through themes of biology, mending, and environmentalism. In studying intersections and contrasts between the natural and the artificial with imagery drawn from craft and across the natural world, Juliana explores the place of humanity within these concepts. Similarities between these two seemingly opposite ideas are highlighted through the manipulation of organic materials with contemporary and traditional textile techniques, drawing upon repeating organic imagery of pathways, roots, veins, and woven structures. The work brings about reflection on the process of creation and humanity’s interaction with its environment, confronting one’s own individualism outside of nature and contemplation of their sense of place in relation to nature.