I am a potter and a teacher. What I can do is make an unseen thing visible and show you how beautiful I think these plants and animals are.
— Julia Galloway
Julia Galloway's wildly ambitious Endangered Species Project has a simple premise and objective: to create one hand-carved, bas-relief ceramic urn for every endangered and extinct animal in the United States—somewhere north of 1400 individual pots.
Radius Gallery is honored to give you the opportunity to purchase works from an earlier iteration of the project: painted urns and other "prototypes" that Julia completed between 2017 and 2023. Each of these decorated vessels is a unique, quiet meditation on a species living on the vulnerable edge of existence. We hope you’ll find one that connects with you personally, because it’s that connection that will start to bring us back into balance with the natural world.
PROJECT STATEMENT
Several years ago I was walking through the Minneapolis Airport half listening to a podcast about the Wandering Albatross. It is the largest of the albatross breeds, with a wingspan measuring 11 feet, and it can keep aloft in wind currents over the southern oceans for a month without returning to land. This bird’s population is dwindling due to industrial line fishing; the Wandering Albatross is being decapitated at the rate of one bird every five minutes. Three albatross had been killed in the time I'd been walking through the airport. Right there by gate C15, I was actually brought to my knees, stunned by this bycatch carnage. But what can I do about this? Quit my job, leave my studio and head out for civil disobedience? Throw myself in the path of industrial fishing factories? Not very effective or realistic. However, I am a potter and a teacher, and I can make something generally unseen, visible.
Making pottery is how I understand the world; for this project, I am making covered jars, urns really, for endangered species. Urns are traditionally used to hold ashes from cremation. I am making urns for the endangered species of the United States—species in my backyard. The urns are sized to hold an average human’s ashes. On each urn is an image of an endangered, threatened or special concern species. The urns are displayed empty, as most of the species are still alive. The emptiness is a sign of hope.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Julia Galloway is a utilitarian potter and professor of Ceramics at the University of Montana. Raised in Boston, Julia started throwing in high school, buying her first wheel with her babysitting money. She kept her wheel in her bedroom and carried her pots in a shoebox to her high school to be fired. She attended the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University for her BFA degree and then the Massachusetts College of Art as a Post-Baccalaureate student. Julia earned her MFA degree from University of Colorado-Boulder during which she was a visiting scholar at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, studying contemporary crafts and the history of pottery.
Julia is interested in all aspects in the field of the ceramic arts from making pottery, jurying exhibitions, studying ceramics from other cultures and writing about pottery. She has juried the NCECA National Exhibition, the Zainesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics and the 500 Vases publication. Julia is dedicated to education, whether on a traditional college campus, a crafts school or local arts center; she has taught more than two hundred workshops, demonstrations and lectures. In addition, she has developed service based educational websites: Montana Clay, The Field Guide for Ceramics Artisans, The Library of Cups, as well as Making History.
Julia's work has been exhibited across the United States, Canada, and Asia, and is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum's Renwick Gallery in Washington DC, the Long Beach Art Museum in Long Beach, CA, the Ceramics Research Center at the Arizona State Art Museum, Alfred Ceramics Art Museum at Alfred University, the Dinnerware Museum in Ann Arbor Michigan and The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Julia was awarded a United States Artist Grant and named a Distinguished Scholar at the University of Montana, the first person in the arts to receive the recognition since 1986. In 2023 she was named Artist of the Year by Ceramics Monthly, the field's leading trade publication.
Julia has served on the boards of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, and was Director at Large ofr the National Council for the Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). Her work has been published in Ceramics Monthly, Studio Potter, Art and Perception and Clay Times. In addition, her work has been included in publications such as Mastering the Potter’s Wheel by Ben Carter, A Complete Guide to Mid-Range Glazes by Jon Britt, as well as The Ceramic Continuum from the Archie Bray Foundation.
Julia lives in Missoula, making pottery in her home studio and teaching ceramics, professional practices, and pedagogy at the University of Montana.