If you read Friday’s post, An Alternative Space, you will recognize Julia DeMaree as the performance and installation artist who came to The Upstairs and brought along a young David Sedaris as one of her assistants. If you read all the comments you will have also seen that in one comment I discovered that Julia had passed away last July. A deeply generous and empathetic person, Julia curated me into my very first art show at UNC-Chapel Hill and then gave me my first New York gig in the performance space she ran in her basement apartment in the East Village. David tells me that she was one of the people who changed his life.
The video above is a glimpse of the performance and installation she did at The Upstairs in 1980. Photos are by Duncan Fick.
Julia led a beautiful life, one that should inspire artists and non-artists, a life constructed like a life-long piece of performance art. In addition to founding multiple organizations - one for the homeless community in Harlem she ran for twenty years, another, called H.O.M.E. for she ran for the homeless community in Maine – she studied traditional Chinese Medicine for twenty years and lived the last years of her life according to Taoist principles and the writings of Thich Nhat Hahn.
Here’s something she wrote that I found online that will give you an idea of her life. I hope it inspires you to learn, as she did, how to give and receive.
Some twenty years ago, I went to Harlem to teach weekly art classes to a group of mentally challenged adults at a day rehabilitation treatment program called Community Support System (CSS). I had taken the job to help support myself as a struggling artist in New York City. I was not as yet Orthodox. Indeed, I reveled in both my individualistic lifestyle and my art style—making paper walking tents that one could put over one’s head like a long umbrella and stroll about the city at will. After six months of teaching art, I was hired full-time as a “mental health worker.”
My new job opened me up to redefining myself as a community person, a change that created significant growing pains to my identity as an independent individual. Also, I expanded my understanding of “creativity” to include the dynamics of human relationships, a much more complex and difficult affair than making art. I set off on my journey blessed with Louise, a fellow artist, hired six months after I was.
Together we created a safe space that became a beacon for those clients who were called to make things and who wanted a quiet place in their lives. Of these some were assigned a permanent workspace where they worked every day. Over time, our studio burgeoned into a multifaceted community of much activity that we called “Souls in Motion.” It was in this room that I learned how to give and receive.
Rest in peace, dear Julia
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