Elizabeth Ferrer Essay
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The collages reinforce a sense — also derived from her paintings — that Speed has an innate ability to tap into that vein of absurdity that can creep into many moments of our lives, both large and small. She has long been fascinated by this approach to creating art, one also appreciated by artists associated with diverse movements over the last century. For early twentieth-century artists of the dada movement outraged by the injustices then beleaguering German society and by the violence that had befallen Europe during the First World War, combinations of images and text functioned as caustic political and social statements. In the 1920s, collage served quite a different end for surrealists interested in exploring the subconscious, dreams, and the creative potential of chance encounters or associations. Combining seemingly random fragments of printed imagery became an ideal artistic mode for picturing the disjunctive and the nonsensical.
But even if Speed's work reflects that notion of convulsive beauty that surrealism's founder, Andre Breton, prescribed as essential to the work of art, her collages have an earlier, perhaps more direct, lineage. In the early 1900s, novelty "tall tale postcards," produced by way of photomontage, became a popular fad in the United States; we've all seen the images of open rail-cars holding impossibly huge watermelons, cabbages, lemons, or other fruit. This was a true popular art form devised as a simple amusement by everyday people, not "fine artists." Speed's collages give a nod to these works, and especially to the nostalgic brand of humor that is often associated with Victorian-era popular imagery. But there is more at work here than a skilled prankster's hand. Speed understands how to balance textures, forms, and colors in her collages, in ways that transform dissonance into unexpected visual pleasure.
The deep improbability of the scenes she creates is offset by the abundant detail provided by the old photo engravings that she employs and by her flawless technique in juxtaposing one unrelated fragment with another. It is perhaps because these compositions work so well visually that we are goaded into looking at them more than once, and moved to question why, for example, sections of human internal organs appear so elegant crowning a man's head, or why the stone pedestals of statues work so well as aquaria, or as elaborate frames for scenes of the Grand Canyon. Speed's collages look like theaters of the absurd, but they make a strange kind of sense. Moreover, with their intimate scale, these works are small but dense worlds in which anxiety, violence, erotica, sublime beauty, black humor, and mystery, each seen in sharp focus, can exist side by side.
With her collages and paintings alike, Julie Speed acknowledges the inspiration of many nonconventional sources. She had little exposure to museums and to original works of art while growing up, but pictures of all kinds always fascinated her. Speed fondly recalls spending hours as a small child looking at her parents' copy of The Book of the World's Great Religions, especially the illustrations of frightening Hindu gods and goddesses and of violent biblical scenes by Renaissance masters. As a teenager, she had her first broad exposure to contemporary art when she worked for several summers at a Connecticut art gallery and saw works by such eminent American realists as Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher, and Neil Welliver. Also during this period Speed spent much time reading books of fairy tales, and was especially drawn to illustrations by Edmund Dulac, Sulamith Wulfing, and Edward Gorey. She notes that a beloved aunt — a palmist, fairy-tale translator, and international traveler — not only introduced her to many fairy tales, but also nurtured her creativity.