Juliette Morris Williams
In January of this year figurative sculpture and mixed media artist Juliette Morris Williams received a 2024 Fellowship from the First Peoples Fund to create a new body of work. The Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship is a yearlong program that helps independent Native artists pursue art as a way to build a business to support themselves and their families. The program provides professional development training, mentorship, and funding to launch them into success and support Fellows in cultivating more ways to share their knowledge and gifts with others in their communities.
We took a moment to congratulate Williams on her recent success, talk about her work, and find out what’s next.
We asked Williams when she recognized her calling to be an artist and she shared some tender truths, coming on the heels of her recent fellowship award.
“This is a bittersweet question at the moment; my Mother, Carole Morris, passed in January. She was and is such a muse for me. But she was also the person who introduced me to the art world. She was a volunteer for the public elementary school system program called Let's Look at Art. She would visit the classrooms with large prints of famous work, and we would discuss them.”
It was through this program that Williams says she fell in love with Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy and Diego Rivera's Flower Seller.
In the midst of this bittersweet time, Juliette Williams is looking towards the future and making plans for her fellowship funds.
“I am honored to be a fellow with the First Peoples Fund, because I feel that I can reach more people now and continue the work I so dearly love. The Fund enables me to travel to Oklahoma, New Mexico and Mexico City to gather materials and experiences that will enrich my work and provide me with an entirely new body of work.”
Williams’s new work, Mujeres Divinas: Indigenous Women of North and Central America, focuses on women—selected by Williams—as individuals who have done something to further the education of their communities. “
For example, I am featuring the work of Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo) and her sculpture as well as her horticultural work (cultivating native plants indigenous to that area) to assist her tribe in maintaining their health.”
Each woman that Williams brings her focus to will have her work honored with a sculpture and a wall hanging, showing what she does and what it brings to her community.
These days, Williams works mainly with handmade paint and pigment, naturally dyed cloth, and clay. She currently studies under two well known artists in the Grass Valley-Nevada City Cultural District. They also happen to be two of the artists whose work she admires.
“My dear friend Jennifer Rugge creates incredibly soulful and interpersonal work that touches us all. We all come from the same Earth, and she gives us glimpses of where we have been and where we are going. My teacher and dear friend Deborah Bridges is another artist who touches people with her beautiful figurative sculptures. She explores the many faces we can sometimes 'put on,' but also the faces who show who we truly are.”
We’re always curious about what inspires artists, and in Nevada County we often hear the astounding natural beauty as one of the many reasons.
“Most of the time I am inspired by the world around me. The people and how they relate to their environment. I love color and movement, and in sculpture I especially love the way light and shadow plays with the piece to create not just a mood but also a message.”
As Williams takes a deep dive into her next body of work we asked, what’s next?
“Lots of travel, and some very good work! I will be celebrating the solar eclipse in April at the Choctaw Cultural Center in Durant, Oklahoma, as well as meeting with the archaeology team there to learn more about the land. My father's family came to Arkansas and Oklahoma on the first Trail of Tears, and it is a very important part of my work to tell my family's story in this project.”
You can learn more about the artist and her work at juliettemorriswilliams.com.
This story originally appeared in the March 15th, 2024 edition of the GVNC Culture Connection newsletter.
