Julie Püttgen was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and grew up in Gainesville, Fresno and Atlanta. She attended Yale University (BA) and Georgia State University (MFA). In the 1990’s, she taught in Hong Kong, traveled around Asia, and then lived as a nun in Buddhist monasteries for three years. She teaches drawing, painting, interdisciplinary seminars, and book arts at Sewanee: The University of the South.
Ms. Püttgen works across media (painting, photography, digital animation, installation), and also curates exhibitions, such as the stupendous, environmentally-themed Cutting Fine, Cutting Deep exhibition of cut paper work from Switzerland and North America, which traveled around the South in 2008-2009. She has exhibited nationally in group and solo shows at museums and galleries including the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Yale School of Art Gallery, Space 301 in Mobile, and Ruby Green Contemporary Art in Nashville. She is currently studying the art of Tibetan thangka painting, as part of an ongoing effort to bring traditional contemplative practices into her work.
“As for the South & its influence,” writes Ms. Püttgen, “all I can say is that there is obviously some strong karmic connection in this life. I am a first-generation immigrant to the US, whose life has gone in circles always returning below the Mason-Dixon (or -Dixie) line: Switzerland to Florida, California to Georgia, Hong Kong and England to Georgia, and now on to rural Tennessee. Sometimes my love of the South is most apparent when I hear non-Southerners say stupid stuff about the region, and I see how ill-fitting those ideas are to my experience. As a bilingual French speaker and bearer of multiple nationalities (Swiss, French, Swedish, and most recently US), I have never had the possibility of identifying completely with any single culture, but the South’s acceptance of artist-eccentrics feels pretty comfortable to me.”
Unless & Until
Whitespace
Atlanta, GA
May 21 – June 19, 2010
Unless & Until
Lewis Gallery
Millsaps College
February 2 – March 4, 2010
Artists’ Talks: February 19, 2010
For more info, go to www.unlessanduntil.info/events.html.
http://www.unlessanduntil.info
http://www.turtlenosedsnake.com
Contact Artist.
