Julia Schwadron Marianelli

creative awareness | arts & culture | makers’ movement

BY KAYLA ANDERSON | PHOTOS COURTESY JULIA SCHWADRON MARIANELLI

LEFT: Julia Schwadron Marianelli at work in her studio. MIDDLE: “Rules With No Room”by Julia Schwadron Marianelli. RIGHT: “Brittle Myths” by Julia Schwadron Marianelli.

Aheap of layered, flowery, colorful abstractness catches my eye. It is hanging up in one of the rooms of the Melhop Gallery 7077 in Zephyr Cove, Nev. Visual artist and gallery owner Frances Melhop explains that it is the work of local artist Julia Schwadron Marianelli, who specializes in a unique style of contemporary art that uses language at its base and then builds landscapes on top of it. One of Schwadron Marianelli’s pieces titled “Big Meadow” was enlarged and featured on a billboard in downtown Reno in March as part of The Holland Project’s 2022 Billboard Gallery. Schwadron Marianelli says the piece was inspired by the color flocks found on the trails in South Lake Tahoe. Schwadron Marianelli has been creating art her whole life. When she was a kid, her father was a newspaper editor who worked for the “Los Angeles Times” and then “the “New York Times,” and played the trombone. Her mother was a ballet dancer. She has two siblings and as they ventured toward the performing arts, she went into illustration. “We were basically saturated in the arts, but I loved to draw and process things visually,” Schwadron Marianelli says. “My parents pushed and encouraged me to learn different techniques, to try everything.” Throughout the years, she refined her style through experience, repetition

and education. She interest in painting developed while she was taking undergraduate classes at University of California, San Diego. It was there that she learned conceptual art and developed her stylistic preferences, graduating with a BA in studio art. She then went on to earn an MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art. In early 2013 when pregnant with her first son, her husband Josh met Tahoebased photographer Corey Rich and he offered Josh a job at his production company. Even though Tahoe was a substantial change from New York City, it became an exciting opportunity for her to raise a growing family and focus on the vision for her art. “It was overwhelming, to be in this giant nature, to be inside it, in this experience. It took me 5 years to be able to get any clarity behind it,” she says. “Lake Tahoe is so different from New York City; you can’t even compare the two lifestyles.” Schwadron Marianelli began combining her text-based work and layering on top of it, even sometimes dragging still life work, such as patterns of pinecones, into the art. She started trail running and loves that she doesn’t need anything to do it — she can just walk out the door and go. It was on her runs that she started noticing the trees, the flowers, the environment around her and began taking the pictures that inspire her work. “There is just so much about the natural landscape that is compelling,” she says, explaining that she uses art to bridge her thoughts and internal landscape with the external environment that surrounds it. Schwadron Marianelli will usually start with a phrase she comes across and build a painting off that. Those phrases usually become the name of the finished piece. Sometimes you can read the words, but they’re more like a matrix, a skeleton, the origin points of a theme. She uses water-based paints, oil and even bleach and/or charcoal to record her observed moments over text abstractions, patterns and imagery onto alternative surfaces. For instance, she has a roll of canvas that’s navy-blue dyed cotton and she uses bleach pens or paste to blank it out. “I don’t love to start on a blank piece of anything. I’ve painted on denim, burlap. My friends Caitlin Parker and Sarah Lillegard use plant dyes in their work; I have started to collaborate with the landscape in that way. I love learning what Sarah and Caitlin are up to and see what we can do together. It gives me the incentive to work in broader terms,” she says. Schwadron Marianelli’s work is being show as part of a group exhibition, “EYE want candy,” at Melhop Gallery 7077 until Aug. 23. | juliaschwadron. com, Melhop Gallery 7077 on Facebook n

“It was overwhelming, to be in this giant nature, to be inside it, in this experience. It took me 5 years to be able to get any clarity behind it. Lake Tahoe is so different from New York City; you can’t even compare the two lifestyles.” - Julia Schwadron Marianelli

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The Wildlife Community Pole Project created by Glenshire Elementary School fifth graders and local artist Nancy Tieken Lopez of Trails & Vistas is on display on the trail around the Glenshire Pond in back of Glenshire Devonshire Clubhouse in Truckee. Three 14-foot pine poles were painted by the students with the fauna and flora of the Sierra Nevada region. | nancylopezart.com

Coolfire Studios’ documentary film “Magic in the Mountains” is now available for purchase or rental on streaming platforms including iTunes, Amazon, Fandango and other services.

The film tells the story of how Palisades Tahoe (then known as Squaw Valley), a little-known ski area in California, won the bid for the 1960 Winter Olympics and, with the help of Walt Disney.| @magicinthemountainsfilm

Haldan Art Gallery | S. Lake Tahoe | Aug. 17 5-7 p.m. | ltcc.edu

Gatekeeper’s Museum | Tahoe City | Aug. 17-March 5 10 a.m.-5 p.m. | northtahoemuseums.org

Gatekeeper’s Museum | Tahoe City | Aug. 17-31 11 a.m.-4 p.m. | northtahoemuseums.org

Gatekeeper’s Museum | Tahoe City | Aug. 17-Oct. 5 10 a.m.-5 p.m. | northtahoemuseums.org

Gatekeeper’s Museum | Tahoe City | Aug. 17-Sept. 28 11 a.m.-4 p.m. | northtahoemuseums.org

Tahoe Art League Gallery | South Lake Tahoe | Aug. 18-Sept. 30 11 a.m.-4 p.m. | talart.org

Marcus Ashley Gallery | South Lake Tahoe | Aug. 19-July 22 12-5 p.m. | (530) 544-4278

Tahoe City Art By the Lake

Boatworks Mall | Tahoe City | Aug. 19-21 10 a.m.-5 p.m. | (530) 525-2992, pacificfinearts.com

Graeagle Park | Graeagle | Aug. 20-21 10 a.m.-5 p.m. | (916) 705-2652, professionalartisansco-op.com

N. Tahoe Arts | Tahoe City | Aug. 20-Sept. 17 1-3:30 p.m. | (530) 553-1392, checkout.square.site

Tahoe Backyard | Kings Beach | Saturdays 3-8 p.m. | facebook.com

Truckee Roundhouse | Truckee | Saturdays 1-1:45 p.m. | truckeeroundhouse.org

North Tahoe Art Center | Kings Beach | Aug. 22-Sept. 5 6-8 p.m. | northtahoearts.org

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