Bio
Julie Abijanac is a mixed-media artist whose work explores self-discovery and personal growth through experimentation and risk-taking. She pushes creative boundaries across painting, drawing, and embroidery, crafting a rich visual palimpsest where past approaches and current abstractions coexist harmoniously. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with selected works in ConnectArt at Galeria-Taller Lolo in Matanzas, Cuba, and the II International Textile Art Symposium: FORTRESS MAN at the Mark Rothko Center in Latvia, where her work was acquired for the collection. Her achievements include Best in Show at the 10th International Paper Triennial at the Musée du Charmey, Switzerland (2020), the People’s Choice Award at FiberArt International at the Fiber Guild of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2013), and First Place in Fiber/Textiles at the 68th Annual Ohio Exhibition at the Zanesville Museum of Art, Zanesville, Ohio(2012). She is also a recipient of the Capelli d’Angeli Foundation 2013 Artist Grant for her work addressing cancer.
Abijanac earned her BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She is currently a Professor and Chair of the MFA and Fine Arts program at CCAD.Artist Statment
In my work, I merge various elements of painting and drawing with embroidery, crafting a rich visual palimpsest where past approaches and current abstractions coexist harmoniously. Techniques and motifs from my earlier artistic practices resurface in layered forms, with embroidery adding significant tactile depth and striking dimension to my abstract compositions. The physical act of making—layering, stitching, and mark-making—is central to my practice. Each stitch, brushstroke, and drawn line is a deliberate act of labor, a tangible record of time spent in process. The repetitive, meditative nature of embroidery slows the act of creation, emphasizing the weight of each gesture and the endurance required to build form and meaning. Through this sustained engagement with material and method, I explore how labor itself can become a marker of memory, persistence, and transformation. The materials I use hold fragments of past gestures and decisions, which are recontextualized to resonate with the present moment. By weaving these memories into new abstractions, my past and present artistic languages converge and interplay, continually shaping and redefining one another. This process of accumulation and revision mirrors the fluid nature of memory—both fragile and enduring—where each layered mark reveals and obscures, constructing a history of labor and care embedded within the surface.