Julia Roland is a young artist whose work is already expanding in its range, reach, and impact. Attending the Savannah College of Art and Design – Atlanta, Julia is an outstanding painter and has created fantastic drawings and 3-D pieces as well. Julia is a deep thinker, a lover of life (and calzones), and has a positive outlook that comes through loud and clear when she talks about her art and the reasons behind her work. Listeners are encouraged to take a look at some of Julia’s creations on Instagram @j.r.art_.
SCAD (3:30) – Savannah College of Art and Design
Introduction to art via one’s environment (4:30)
Art Direction as a career option (5:00)
Deciding to be an artist (6:15)
A fine arts magnet school experience (6:30)
Presenting one’s work at an early age (7:15)
Garrison Middle School and Savannah Arts Academy (7:30)
Painting? (8:00)
Varied interests and art opportunities (8:50)
Access to materials as a factor for the pursuit of art (9:30)
Why keep learning? (11:00)
How is college different from high school? (11:45)
Basketball with no high school team (13:00)
Turning point moments in art (15:45)
Believing in one’s potential, plans, and possibilities (16:15)
A parent’s support (16:45)
COVID’s impact on schooling (18:00)
A high school principal’s generous act (18:30)
An unexpected benefit of the changes resulting from the pandemic (19:15)
Greatest influencers (20:30)
Artists inspiring others (21:00)
José Lucio (21:20)
Julia’s ongoing affection for the worm sticker (22:00)
The beginning of requests for art from friends and family (23:00)
Commissioned work for the Taste of the Junction Festival in Iowa (24:15)
From a shy child to speaking with others about her art (25:15)
Make art, local recognition, meaning, and impact (26:00)
Rafiki (26:45)
Parents’ wedding portrait (27:30)
The lobster’s interview (28:30)
Self-Portraits (29:45)
A great teacher, Margo Ecke (32:30)
The learning needs to connect to the student and the teacher (34:45)
Julia Roland on Instagram
@j.r.art_
Esther F. Garrison School for the Arts
https://spwww.sccpss.com/schools/efg/Pages/default.aspx
Savannah Arts Academy
https://spwww.sccpss.com/schools/saa/Pages/default.aspx
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)
SCAD Atlanta
https://www.scad.edu/locations/atlanta
Margo Ecke
https://www.scad.edu/academics/faculty/margot-ecke
America’s Team
Jose Lucio
http://www.joselucio.com/ and jose@joselucio.com
Taste of the Junction Festival, West DesMoines, Iowa
https://www.tasteofthejunction.org
David’s LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-w-reynolds-5a5b0a36/
David Reynolds (00:11):
What matters most in learning, the challenge, the thrill, the benefits, interacting with other people, or something else entirely? What is the connection between leading and learning? Does change drive learning, or does learning drive change? What's more important, teaching or learning? Is everyone a leader, a learner, a teacher? Want answers? Listen in as we address these intriguing issues through commentary and with guests who share their thinking and tell us their stories. Lead, Learn, Change.
Julia Roland (00:56):
Actually, eighth grade, I really had to sit down and think. Where do I want to go with my career and with my life? Do I want to take this pathway to this school and play basketball, and hopefully play in college, and learn what I want to learn on the side? Or do I really want to buckle down and focus on my academics? My mom is always telling me how you have to write your own narrative. And the things that you're telling yourself are really important. If you're not confident, or if you're not encouraging yourself, you're probably not going to do as well as you can.
Julia Roland
My teachers were very encouraging, and I just fell in love with it. And I knew about a high school in my area called Savannah Arts Academy, which was basically, I like to call it a mini SCAD, or a bigger version of my middle school, Garrison. And so then I just worked towards getting into Savannah Arts, and it just kind of grew from there. That was just amazing, and it just really showed me how much teachers and these adults in our community really care about their students. I think it's just little things like that, you have no idea how you can affect someone with what you create.
David Reynolds
Today's guest on Lead, Learn, Change is Julia Roland. Julia, thanks for taking your valuable time to speak with me today.
Julia Roland
Thanks so much for having me, David. I'm happy to be here.
David Reynolds
Sure. Are you speaking to us from Atlanta, Georgia today?
Julia Roland
Yes, sir. I am sitting in my apartment.
David Reynolds
Are you going to head off to Mellow Mushroom and serve up some great food to some patrons later this weekend?
Julia Roland
I was actually thinking of going in later tonight after our conversation. They want me to learn some new things on the computer, so yeah.
David Reynolds
What's your favorite food at Mellow Mushroom? If any of our listeners head down that way, what do you recommend?
Julia Roland
My gosh, got to go for the calzones. They're a great size, nice cheese. You can add whatever you want to them, and it's just very filling. I love the calzones.
David Reynolds
Well, let's get into our podcast today. Julia is the youngest guest on Lead, Learn, Change thus far. And I'm delighted to be enlightened by somebody who is viewing learning, career, and life from a perspective that's different than mine. Even though college doesn't seem very long ago to me, a lot has changed since the early 1980s when I completed my undergrad work. So among other things, we will talk about school and college today. And Julia, who's an extraordinary artist, is going to bring us some unexpected lessons, I'm sure.
David Reynolds
My acquaintance with Julia is a result of knowing Julia's mom, a fellow educator, for a number of years. And when Anissa showed me some of her young daughter Julia's artwork, I was quite impressed. I've seen most of what Julia has posted on her Instagram site, and we'll be talking about some of her pieces today. That being said, as Julia is a student at SCAD, we're going to start there. Julia, tell us. What is SCAD? What are you doing there exactly? And what led you there?
Julia Roland
It's a private college. It's not like a public or state school, but stands for The Savannah College of Art and Design. And basically, it just is a school that focuses its teaching and its learning around creative careers. So personally for me, going to SCAD, I think I'm going to major in painting and minor in art direction. But they have so many different subjects that you can major in from equestrian, to sound design, set design, illustration, all kinds of things, so yeah.
David Reynolds
What led you to SCAD specifically? Because I am assuming that there are other options available for someone pursuing a career in fine arts.
Julia Roland
Yeah. I mean, totally. I grew up in Savannah, so SCAD is everywhere, all around the city. They've taken over some of the historical buildings. And so you're riding along the street, and like, "Hey, look at that building. That's so beautiful." And you see the little plaque next to it, and it's a SCAD classroom. And so I just grew up around the environment, and just seeing SCAD events all around town, or seeing creative students drawing in the park, or walking around. And it was just very inspirational to me, so I feel like I kind of grew up with SCAD in my viewpoint.
David Reynolds
You mentioned art direction. Can you tell me a little bit more what that means when you say you might have a focus in that area?
Julia Roland
Yeah. So I'm thinking about art direction as my minor, it's basically being the head of creative projects, whether you're the curator of a gallery, or something like that, you kind of have an overall sense of the principles and elements of design. And you just kind of work with a team to create a project.
David Reynolds
That sounds like that provides you with additional options that run parallel to your own pursuit of creating your own art. And it sounds like you want to focus primarily on painting, although when people go to your Instagram site and see your other work, some of your charcoal pieces are wonderful, by the way.
Julia Roland
Thank you.
David Reynolds
Virtually every viewer is going to say, "Yeah, Julia might be a great painter and she's also a great," fill in the blank because even your 3D piece that you created as your first one, you've made a note that you found it to be quite fun, was also very aesthetically pleasing and just a cool piece to look at, and some of your other three dimensional stuff. So I really want the listeners to go take a look at your Instagram site, which we'll have a link to in the show notes. Before SCAD, was there a moment when you knew that art was your thing? Or did your interest slowly develop over time?
Julia Roland
Well, I think I started to become really focused in high school, but I first started getting interested in it in middle school. I went to a magnet arts middle school, and so growing up through elementary school, we could test out all the different performing and visual arts in our school day. So we would have dance class, or chorus, or go to theater, or go to art. And by the time you reached sixth grade, that's the time where you have to actually try out or audition to go to school there for middle school and to kind of focus on a specific major. So at that time, I became really interested in art class, and I decided to make a portfolio and kind of audition. I don't want to say audition, I'm trying to find the word for it, but basically have a chance to draw and show my work to be accepted to be in the school.
Julia Roland
And so I guess it started in middle school, and I just became really focused there. And my teachers were very encouraging and I just fell in love with it. And I knew about a high school in my area called Savannah Arts Academy, which was basically, I like to call it a mini SCAD, or a bigger version of my middle school, Garrison. And so then I just worked towards getting into Savannah Arts, and it just kind of grew from there.
David Reynolds
You've dabbled in or even intentionally focused on a lot of areas so far. Is painting the favorite medium? Or is that too broad almost because there are so many different types of painting? So educate us a little bit about what you love most inside painting. Let us know what your true favorite medium is today. I know that could change over time.
Julia Roland
Yeah. So I love painting. Personally, if we want to get into specifics, I love acrylic paint just because it dries faster and I can keep working on a piece longer, in my opinion. But I also have been dabbling a little bit in oil paint, which is really good for blending and just slow working art. But there are so many different kinds of paints, and as an artist, going to SCAD, I do love painting. But as we mentioned earlier, I took a 3D class this past year. And SCAD is really good about sharing different opportunities and different kinds of art that I didn't even know that I could be interested in, or that I wanted to try out. So I actually really got interested in 3D art, even though it was my first time. So I would say yeah, painting is my favorite thing, but it's not what I want to be limited to, if that makes sense.
David Reynolds
Sure, absolutely. If you think about focusing on your favorite areas of your personal artistic expression, what do you think has contributed most to your learning in that area? Why is that your favorite?
Julia Roland
Well, paint is really easily accessible to people, more so than maybe clay or different kinds of materials, so painting and drawing, they kind of work hand in hand when you're first learning the basics of making artwork. And yeah, so I think that was just what was available to me. And growing up, my mom put me in multiple art camps or art classes over the summer, where I focused on painting. I remember taking this painting class, it was like we replicated paintings of old masters. And we learned an extensive process of oil painting, from drawing a grid of your subject, and then sketching out your subject with the grid, to doing an extensive charcoal drawing, to doing a black and white or green scale painting over that, and then finally going back over that green scale or black and white scale painting with the color. So I think painting has just always been interesting to me, and it's just been very available to me, so yeah.
David Reynolds
When you're moving through those phases of learning in each medium or each new project, how do know that you've learned what you think is the minimum that you truly need to know to create that piece of work? And what is it that nudges you towards learning even more about that same type of medium?
Julia Roland
Personally as a painter, or as a younger painter, every single time I go to paint a new piece, I learn different things about the paint, like how it reacts with different colors, or the canvas, or the material that I'm painting on. And I see examples in real life and I'm like, "Oh, maybe I want to replicate that in my piece." And I'm like, "How are they getting this texture? How are they showing what they're showing to the viewer in this way?" And also, as an artist, I've been going back and forth between multiple styles, so just kind of trying new things and just painting new subjects what really keeps me going and learning how to use the paint to portray what I'm trying to say through my art is very inspiring.
David Reynolds
I do want to know about your school experiences, including SCAD. Thinking about that as your college experience, how is that different from high school?
Julia Roland
In college, I'm definitely more engaged in learning, just because what I'm learning is more focused and tailored to what I want to do in general. That's what college is about, whereas in high school, I had to take a bunch of subject classes that I necessarily wasn't interested in, but I still had to try my best at and do. So I think college is a space for you to start to find yourself and to figure out. What do you really like? You've learned the basics in everything in high school to get you to this moment. So now you can really branch out and just kind of learn from different people and different experiences, and professors who have studied the subjects that they're teaching for years and years. And they're just very passionate about that, know what they're talking about. So I think it's definitely more focused in college, so I like that a lot more.
David Reynolds
It sounds like you always want to create or go find an opportunity to pursue what you're really interested in because of your answer about what leads you to pursue more learning, what you just said about focus, and that I know you and I've talked briefly before that in high school, for example, there was no basketball team, but you wanted to play basketball, and you ended up playing anyway. So how did that happen? And why did you pursue that sport for a couple of years?
Julia Roland
Oh, my gosh. So I just grew up loving basketball. I played it in elementary school. And my middle school actually had a team, and I loved that team. And my middle school basketball coach was actually the varsity coach of the girls' basketball team at another high school in Savannah. So actually, eighth grade, I really had to sit down and think. Where do I want to go with my career and with my life? Do I want to take this pathway to this school and play basketball, and hopefully play in college, and learn what I want to learn on the side? Or do I really want to buckle down and focus on my academics and my art, and go to Savannah Arts? So that was a really challenging thing.
Julia Roland
And I spoke to my parents, and I had really fallen in love with creating things and making art. And I decided to go to Savannah Arts, but I still loved basketball. And I played AAU for a couple years. And that same coach that was my coach in middle school and who was the varsity coach at another high school, was chosen to be a coach for this organization called America's Team. And basically, he and another coach were selected to choose some girls that they knew who were from around the area to go play basketball abroad. And so the summer before ninth grade, he actually chose me for this actual high school program, so I was the only person who hadn't been in the high school, and I was on the team. And we went to Italy and we played, and we toured the country, and it was amazing. I felt like I didn't really miss out on basketball as much because of that experience, so it definitely made it an easier transition.
David Reynolds
Wow. You end up excelling at everything that you do. That's a pretty significant accomplishment to be the only pre high school player on that traveling team, and being able to travel internationally and play.
Julia Roland
Yes.
David Reynolds
What about some turning point moments, where you decided to do something else, or dive deeper into a particular area?
Julia Roland
Yeah. So growing up, becoming an artist, I feel like it was kind of in the back of my mind, maybe this is not a real career, or I'm not going to be able to sell my art freelance. I'm going to have to have another job on the side. And so I actually struggled a lot with just believing in myself in high school in order to do what I really wanted to do with my life, and that is to create art and learn more about this thing. And as I got older in high school, my mom, she's my biggest fan, and so is my dad, and they would share my art with people. And people would start coming to me, "Hey, I have this picture. Can you please make this for me? I want to give this gift to someone. Can you draw this? Can you paint this?" And I would be like, "Sure." And they would actually pay for my work and gift it to people, and that's when I realized these other people, they see what I'm doing and they believe in me. So why can't I believe in myself?
Julia Roland (17:06):
My mom is always telling me how you have to write your own narrative. And the things that you're telling yourself are really important. If you're not confident, or if you're not encouraging yourself, you're probably not going to do as well as you can. And so after a few people really started telling me how good my art was and buying it from me, I was like, "I can do this. I can do this full-time. I can go to SCAD if I want to. I can learn about this." I guess that moment in high school where I just started getting a lot of commissioned work was a pivotal moment for me.
David Reynolds (17:26):
From what you've said, it didn't have to be a giant number of people. It needed to be a few people who clearly appreciated your talent and wanted to have your work as part of the art in their own home, or they valued it enough to give it to someone else as a gift. So it wasn't really about the number, was it? It was really just about a meaningful connection with a couple of people that was enough to make a difference and move you forward. So that's really inspirational because that's how things get done.
Julia Roland (17:56):
Exactly.
David Reynolds (17:57):
And that's how relationships make a difference in any field or any sector. You're starting your sophomore year, and you've had a very interesting year because of events in the world with COVID. How has your formal structured learning been impacted by everything that's been going on the past 18 months or so?
Julia Roland (18:19):
COVID really started to hit at the end of my senior year, which was really tragic. We weren't able to have a traditional graduation. One thing that was cool though, my principal, he actually ... We set up kind of like a motorcade kind of graduation, so students that lived in certain areas had certain days and times where they would come outside in their attire, and he'd drive around and actually come to our homes or our neighborhoods and flip our tassels, and that was just amazing.
David Reynolds (18:49):
Wow.
Julia Roland (18:49):
And it just really showed me how much teachers and these adults in our community really care about their students, so I really loved that. And I want to say starting college, it was kind of sad because I was still at home. I had planned to move into the dorms and everything, but obviously, that wasn't going to happen anymore due to the state of COVID and everything. So I was taking my classes on Zoom and everything. I think what really got me going was, yeah, I don't really want to roll out of bed just a few feet over to my desk and sit at my computer. But everybody was going through the same thing. And I just saw how much effort my teachers were putting into the content and trying to engage us in information. And I wanted to reciprocate that effort, so that's really what kept me going and kept me strong academically this first year.
Julia Roland (19:47):
And also, I think the main struggle for me with COVID probably was more on a social stance. I wasn't able to interact with new students and other people the way I wanted to. So I really just honed in and focused on my work, and I looked forward to creating things that I could talk about with my professors. So I think COVID definitely helped me to develop a relationship with my professors through my work.
David Reynolds (20:16):
That's interesting. Sounds like you flipped the situation around to your benefit, and you haven't slowed down in generating or producing art.
Julia Roland (20:26):
Yeah.
David Reynolds (20:31):
Why do you think you view life and approach learning the way that you do? Who are your greatest influencers?
Julia Roland (20:39):
Well, I have to give a shout out. As you know, my mom, she's always taught me that learning is very valuable. And it's more than just memorizing content. You have to apply it to your life, and things like that, so definitely her positive outlook on just learning new things and being your best self, but also, just a combination of different artists have inspired me. If you're an artist and you come into my classroom and you tell me your story and how you've gotten where you are, I'm definitely going to be inspired.
Julia Roland (21:15):
I remember, it's crazy, I have this crazy story. In middle school, this artist, José Lucio I think is his name. I don't know how to pronounce it. Excuse me if I'm wrong. But he's a children's illustrator. And he came into our class and he talked about his work, and he showed us some of his books and some of his artwork. And it was very cartoon like, very childlike. I loved it, and at the end of his session with us, he gave us these stickers of his work. And the one that I got, it was a little worm. It was just this worm sticker. And I loved it so much, I put it on my water bottle, and that became a staple. People would see me, "Julia, with the worm on her water bottle." I would just think of this artist, he made this, and he has no idea how this has impacted me. And for years, I had that worm on my water bottle.
Julia Roland (22:09):
And so I got to high school, and it was crazy because I was like, "I need a new water bottle. This thing, it's ratty, it's terrible." And I realized I'm not going to have this worm on my water bottle to inspire me. And so I found him on Instagram. I sent him this long message. I was like, "Hey, Mr. Lucio, I remember you coming to my class and just speaking to me and really inspiring me in middle school. And it's crazy, I'm a high school student now, but I got a new water bottle." I sent him a picture of my old water bottle, and he was so excited. And he sent me in the mail a bunch of new worm stickers, so now I have enough to last me a lifetime. I think it's just little things like that, you have no idea how you can affect someone with what you create.
David Reynolds (22:59):
Was that your inspiration for the water bottle art that you now do? Because I saw a few of your posts where it looks like that's a thing. Somebody can ask Julia, "Hey, paint my water bottle." Is that where that came from?
Julia Roland (23:13):
Honestly, no. My friend just reached out to me and was like, "Hey, I have this water bottle. It'd be cool. Can you paint this goat on it?" And I was like, "Sure, absolutely I can." And then another friend of mine saw that and she was like, "Hey, I have this other friend. I'm giving her a gift. Can you paint a sunflower on it?" And it was just awesome. It's great to have friends who support you.
David Reynolds (23:36):
That's a great segue into hopes and dreams about your work. I know you and your mom, your art and her handmade jewelry, have been on location at the Atlanta Indie Market, I think.
Julia Roland (23:46):
Yeah.
David Reynolds (23:47):
Would you have envisioned yourself 10 years ago, or five, at this type of venue? And your work has been featured in a magazine from Iowa, I think. How did that come about? And talk about the public aspect of your work already at your young age. And then talk about your hopes and dreams going forward.
Julia Roland (24:05):
Oh, man. Thinking back on what I've already accomplished and how many people have seen or bought my art, or have been affected by it is truly amazing. You've mentioned my work being used for the Taste of the Junction Festival in Iowa, so actually, that was started by members of my family. And it all began when they started to pick honorees each year to talk about, and who have lived in the Valley Junction of West Des Moines for years, and they came up with this idea of presenting them with artwork of the people that they were honoring. And they asked me to start doing that. Of course, I jumped at the idea. I was like, "Absolutely." And so that's how I kind of got recognized up there for painting these portraits of these people in the community.
Julia Roland (24:53):
And then they reached out to me, asking if I could create kind of like a cover for a book or a flyer, and I made a collage mixed with the cuisine, the people, and nationalities or backgrounds. And it was crazy, and they made these huge blow up posters to advertise for the event with my art on it, and it was just amazing. And selling artwork with my mom at these vending events, I never thought I could do that. As a kid, I was very shy. I didn't really like to talk to people. And I guess that's why I kind of maybe drew to art because I could speak through that in other ways. And I just never imagined that I could be standing outside selling my art to strangers and talking to them about what I'm creating. It's crazy.
David Reynolds (25:48):
Hopes and dreams, then. What do you envision going forward? Because you've had some great experiences now that gets you excited, even thinking back on them. What gets you excited about what might be going forward?
Julia Roland (26:01):
I hope to be able to just make art and create it. Hopefully want to get into some galleries or some shows, and just maybe become like a famous artist around my community or something. It's not really all about becoming world renowned famous artist, but I do want to touch those around me. I want to possibly get into mural artwork. That's something that's always interested me, and yeah, just kind of keep pursuing and learning along the way.
David Reynolds (26:35):
Let's get real specific and talk about a couple of your pieces. I've been looking at your Instagram again as we prepared for our conversation today. And I want to hear what you have to say about some of your pieces. So I'm going to mention the name or description because all of your art's not named that's posted. It might all be, but I didn't see it on everything, so I'll just describe it. And then you just share whatever comes to mind. The Great Rafiki from The Lion King.
Julia Roland (27:01):
That was actually my last project for my drawing class this past year. And he was like, "Draw whatever you want. I just want to see some value. Use whatever medium." And I was thinking of what to draw and lately, I've been really into color and I've been thinking about what's affected me. And my family actually went to see the Broadway Lion King show, and I had a picture of the character in my camera roll, and that's done in colored pencil. And I just did a colorful portrait of this character, who is just full of wisdom and prosperity, and just a very positive character in the story that I just love.
David Reynolds (27:44):
Your parents wedding picture, one of my favorites. What was their reaction when you finished that piece?
Julia Roland (27:52):
Oh, yeah, that was amazing. It was for my drawing class in high school, actually. And I was looking for something to draw in AP drawing. And my concentration for my AP portfolio was just relationships between people and different types of love. And they're just a main example of love that I see in my everyday life, so I chose that picture because my mom just looked so happy, and my dad is just loving her. And I told them I was doing it, and I showed them, and they loved it. And it's hanging up in my house, or in my parents' house to this day. And it's just so special that I can just re-gift them with a special memory.
David Reynolds (28:35):
Total switch of gears to the lobster and the hot tub, and talking into the microphone. It was a humorous piece, which is not the overwhelming majority of your work at all. So how did you come up with the lobster? Just paint that visual picture for people with words, so they know what that particular piece looks like.
Julia Roland (28:56):
Okay, so it's basically just a lobster on some gravel or something, speaking to a microphone, a new microphone. And he's saying, "And then I said, 'Hold up. That ain't no hot tub.'" One of my best friends is Lucia. Her mom just loves funny things like that. She loves sea creatures. And this was still during COVID, and we got together outside and we were painting things. And she's like, "Hey, can you paint this thing for my mom? She just cracks up about it." And I was like, "Absolutely." This lobster may be telling a story about how maybe he was captured, about to be cooked and everything. It's just hilarious. That was a fun piece.
David Reynolds (29:42):
I could ask you about 15 more. I actually created an album in my photo app on my phone called Julia, just for today. So I'm going to have to skip the next six or seven that I would love to hear about, so maybe there'll be a sequel someday, but I have to ask you about one more because I'm using this on the cover art for this episode, and that is a self portrait piece that you posted. And what I want to know about your self portrait piece is: Do you draw exactly what you see or what the image that you're drawing from makes you feel like at the moment? Or is there something else you're wanting to convey? This is a fantastic self portrait. It's just spot on.
Julia Roland (30:22):
Thank you.
David Reynolds (30:23):
I'm very curious about what's in your head and what's the message you're trying to create. Just hey, this is a realistic depiction of exactly what I look like. Or is there anything else involved in that inside the artist's head?
Julia Roland (30:35):
In that particular piece, I was drawing from a photo that was taken of me. I was trying to capture the lighting on my skin and the shadows and the crevices on the skull that I was holding. It was an interesting thing. I was really obsessed with skeletal systems and skulls of different creatures at the time. I just thought they looked interesting. And that piece just reminded me that we all have the same structure in our bodies as humans. And one day, we're all going to pass on, so that's nothing to be worried about. I'm just smiling, just trying to capture my essence and just my positivity, and my smile in that piece is really important.
David Reynolds (31:17):
Do you have a reaction when you finish a self portrait? What goes through your head? It seems like a really interesting thing to do, is to create self portraits, especially when you do multiple self portraits and they all look different. Are you ever surprised that this is what came out?
Julia Roland (31:35):
Yeah. Sometimes I'm looking at this and I'm like, "Whoa. Is this me?" Because I'm just staring at one still photo of myself. It's not me in everyday life. So I mean, of course, they're all going to be different. Actually, it was really interesting this past year in my life drawing class, our very last project was to create a self portrait. But we had to place ourselves in the environment of another painting. And so I put myself in a Kadir Nelson piece, and it was a painting of Spider-Man, and so I put myself in the place of Spider-Man, and I was doing this Spider-Man pose. And I'm just like, "Man, I look really cool doing that. When have I ever posed like that?" It's just fun to see yourself in different ways and to make yourself look however you want.
David Reynolds (32:28):
You mentioned earlier, I think the quote might've been, "My teachers were very encouraging," probably came on the heels of a comment about your mom. Take some time to tell us about a great teacher, or more than one, that you would like to thank.
Julia Roland (32:41):
Wow. There's so many. I really want to say, actually, a lot of my teachers this first year, my professors this first year at SCAD, especially my 3D professor, Margo Ecke, she was amazing. I mean, the 3D classes we were in, it was a foundations class, so most of us had no experience doing 3D work. And so I, at the beginning, I was really, really struggling to try to grasp the concepts and how to make a model. And I really had to talk to her and just get a lot of extra help on the side. How can I do this? And we did a lot of problem solving together and it was like she was my professor, but she was also ... I felt like we were on a team.
Julia Roland (33:33):
And speaking of that class, I won first place in a SCAD competition called Beyond the Dot. And I feel like if I had any other professor, I wouldn't have been able to do that. She was so encouraging with her words, I believe you guys can really do this, because at SCAD, I mean, we only have 10 weeks in a semester. So the projects and everything, it goes by really fast, so there are multiple late nights where you're working on a project trying to finish things. And just hearing her in the back of my head, "You guys can do this. You've already come so far," it's very helpful.
David Reynolds (34:10):
I'm going to include some links in the show notes that I've mentioned before, so that listeners can look at your work. And since I believe the primary connection would be your Instagram page, can listeners contact you there as well directly through Instagram? Is that correct?
Julia Roland (34:27):
Yeah. Feel free to DM me or anything like that.
David Reynolds (34:30):
Before we close, I want to make sure that we left nothing unshared that should have been touched upon.
Julia Roland (34:36):
Yeah. I was having a conversation about this topic in preparation for this conversation with my mother the other day. And we were talking about how teachers can make learning a more engaging process for students. And from my view as a student, my favorite classes from high school and some from this past year weren't even art classes. But I think a lot has to do with the teacher's approach to the content. I had to take an art history class this year in college, and art history can be very, very boring. It can be very straightforward, this is what this is, and you can be like, "Of course, I've heard it all." So going into my art history class this past year in college, I was really not excited, but my teacher, my professor, came into it just so excited about teaching us about not only the specific artworks, but the actual cultural and everything, and experience she's had, things she's seen that has to do the work. And I mean, I started looking forward to that class, and it was insane.
Julia Roland (35:49):
If somebody told me five years ago, "You're going to be sitting in an art history class fully interested in what your teacher has to say, just based on her energy and her passion for the content alone," you could've fooled me because I would not have believed that. So I think it's really important for teachers to care about what they're teaching. And it helps for the student to feel the same way.
David Reynolds (36:13):
That's a great closing point, actually. So I want to thank you very much, Julia, for just giving us a glimpse into this world of art and creativity, and wish you absolutely the best for all of your future endeavors. Thanks for your time today.
Julia Roland (36:27):
Thank you so much.
David Reynolds (36:28):
Sure. So have a great day. And say hey to your mom for me.
Julia Roland (36:32):
Okay, will do.
David Reynolds (36:35):
Thanks for listening today. Find the Lead. Learn. Change. podcast on your search engine, iTunes, or other listening app. Leave a rating, write a review, subscribe, and share with others. In the meantime, go lead, go learn, go make a change. Go!