While the ongoing challenges with the future of the Torpedo Factory artists’ studios continued as of our deadline, Rachel Gordon found a bright spot that shows how the Alexandria institution works to nurture the talents of new artists.
Ceramic artist Julia O’Bryan is ready to take the next step in her career — and it's thanks to the Torpedo Factory Art Center.
For the past five years, the Torpedo Factory Art Center has successfully been running a Post-Grad Residency Program, which seeks to aid young artists who have recently graduated with a degree in the arts to get a jump-start in the professional world.
As she wraps up her time in the studio, she shared that she feels grateful for the time she spent there and confident that she has a great career ahead of her.
O’Bryan’s first interest in the arts began as a dancer during her childhood in Missouri. However, she was forced to leave dance behind after being diagnosed with an aggressive autoimmune disease. She quickly adapted to keep her love for the arts alive by venturing into new creative outlets like fiber arts and drawing.
“It was kind of my way of coping and I think that's really important," she recalled. "I think art is that kind of coping mechanism for a lot of people,” and further explained, “creating art is good and it can help in a lot of tough situations just to work through things.” O’Bryan said she still views art as a source of comfort and hopes she can inspire others to do the same.
Ceramics initially caught O’Bryan’s eye on a trip to Silver Dollar City, a theme park in Missouri. She enjoyed watching the artisans at work in the pottery shop each time her family visited. Her first formal class in ceramics wasn’t until after O’Bryan’s family moved to Texas in search of a warmer climate more suited to accommodate her autoimmune disease. O’Bryan shared, “when I was 16, I convinced my mother to let me take a class at the local art school in Austin. I had recently gone on chemo, so it was kind of her way of helping me stay upbeat.” She ended up loving the class and has dedicated herself to ceramics ever since.
O’Bryan graduated from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in studio arts focused in ceramics and sculpture. During her time in college, she began to create ocean-themed pieces and discovered a special interest in coral.
O’Bryan explained that she views the coral as a metaphor for her autoimmune disease which “has made life kind of difficult.” Coral must battle to survive in its own environment due to polluted waters and coral bleaching caused by climate change. O’Bryan said she feels she can relate to this hardship as her own body has made it “incredibly difficult just to do normal things.”
Being accepted into the Post-Grad Residency Program was a dream come true for O’Bryan. “I’ve had some doctors in the D.C. area that specialize in my specific autoimmune disease and so my mom and I would come up and this would kind of be our safe haven amidst all of the doctors visits.”
She spent a lot of time in the art center and was interested in the residency program from the moment she learned about its existence. She moved to the area after college and was excited to be chosen from a nationwide pool of applicants.
O’Bryan has enjoyed working and living in Alexandria. “Everyone I've met here has been super nice," she said. "I go to the coffee shop two blocks away and I've met a few locals there and they've all been extremely supportive when they find out why I am here.” She enjoys being able to connect with strangers in passing and sharing stories.
“I talk to a lot of people, just bus drivers, and Lyft drivers – if they talk to me I will talk back. And most of them don't actually know about the Torpedo Factory or what it is, so I’ve been pretty lucky to be able to tell people about it just to see if they will come and enjoy it as well ... but I’ve been really surprised that there’s been so many people in this area who just don't know about it.”
O’Bryan has watched her skills grow stronger during her time in the residency. She explained that with her sculptures, “since I've been here, I've been able to take a lot more time on the details … before, I would have a lot of open space in my pieces where it was just blank and it kind of threw off the rest of it. Just adding all of this texture and taking a lot more time has really helped to make it more cohesive.”
More practice with her consistency, form and size has helped her to improve her functional ceramics, like bowls and cups, she said. Yet O’Bryan understands what she believes most ceramic artists know to be true.
“I like just watching them grow into what they are. I pretty much let the clay decide what it's going to be, which sounds weird, but if you have ever worked in clay you kind of understand it. Sometimes you'll be going about making something specific and it won't do that at all. So I pretty much just feel around what the shape wants to be, versus what I want it to be, and most of these pieces are a compromise of those two things.”
Her work is time-consuming and requires intensive focus. At times, the pain caused by her autoimmune disorder and arthritis in her wrists can make the process more difficult for O’Bryan. Even when she finds herself exhausted after almost 10 hours of glazing her pieces, she continues to find fun and enjoyment in creating her ceramics.
She shows a visitor how a pink glazed sculpture would actually turn out to be blue after being fired in the kiln. She explained, “once I have all of the glazing done it’s a super fun process just to see how they change when they come out. All of these colors will be different.”
She laughs, recalling, “my boyfriend always teases me because I always look like I’m super frustrated as I’m doing all of the coral stuff. Just because it takes me forever, and with clay, you're kind of racing against a clock of keeping it moist enough to work with without making it so wet that it would fall apart. So it's a balancing act … you kind of have to do it as quickly as possible just to get it all done.” She focuses, puts on a podcast, and throws herself into it.
The Torpedo Factory is certainly a unique kind of work environment. O’Bryan is the first solely ceramics resident in the Post-Grad program, so she has had to figure out some of the more technical details on her own. Luckily, in a building full of artists, she happens to be right across the hall from another ceramics artist who has been helping her to fire her work in an in-house kiln.
She admits that the window into her studio space, which makes the Torpedo Factory a draw for many visitors so they can watch artists create their work, did make her feel a bit like a zoo attraction at first, but has grown more comfortable working in the space over time.
In terms of visitors in her studio, she explained, “it's so small that a lot of people don’t want to come in and just prefer to watch from the window. Occasionally, if I see a large group of people watching, I’ll just poke my head out the window and be like ‘You guys can come in if you want! I don’t mind!’”
Her favorite interactions are with the children who stop by to watch her work. “Alot of kids like to come in and say how much they love it and how much they love watching me work and that's been so fun. Especially the few kids that really have a passion for art … I want to be able to inspire them to want to do art as well.”
“I was really lucky – I haven’t had to have a job while I was here," she said. "But I know that's not the case for a lot of artists just because it's ridiculously expensive to live.”
“Its not easy being an artist in 2022,” O’Bryan stated plainly. She believes social media marketing is one of the most important assets for today's artists. If you aren’t able to market properly, “you can’t make as much money as you would need to live,” and explained, “I’m not very good at that side of things, so it's been a little difficult. But … as I’ve been making more reels here, and just trying to be intentional about posting to my social media, I have seen an increase in just how many people see it.” Through her Instagram page, @juliacreates, and at her in-person studio, O’Bryan has noticed a lot more interest in her current body of work which has been extremely encouraging to her.
One of O’Bryan’s math-savvy friends from college has helped her figure out how to price her pieces. She explained, “She kind of understands what my work is, and how the materials work, so I just send her numbers mostly and she gives me a range of pricing that I could do and lets me decide from there. But you basically have to decide on how much you're going to pay yourself.” Luckily for O’Bryan, the materials needed for ceramics are cheaper than other mediums. Still, she is interested in ways to further cut down on costs, like formulating her own glazes instead of buying them premixed.
Despite the challenges she might face, O’Bryan can confidently say that she feels good about her future as an artist. She believes she has gained a lot of skills during her time in the Torpedo Factory that will help her market her work. She believes that her work itself has “grown just aesthetically overall to be more interesting to people.”
While O’Bryan will have to move out of the Post-Grad studio so that the next resident can start their term, she isn’t done with the Torpedo Factory just yet. She will be showing the pieces she has created in the December 2022 Post-Grad Residents exhibition in the Target Gallery. She is also interested in entering her work into the Torpedo Factory’s ceramic galleries.
She is currently working on setting up her own studio in her apartment and has already begun finding places where she can access a kiln needed to fire her work. She is interested in finding another residency program in the future and hopes to enter more galleries to get her work out there.
Long-term, O’Bryan’s goal is to move back to Texas, where her family lives. Her dream is to start an art center like the Torpedo Factory there. She explained, “there aren’t a lot of places like this – nothing in one building with galleries and studio spaces that you can go in. It's a pretty unique experience to come here.” O’Bryan’s story is sure to inspire any aspiring artist. She shows great promise and surely has a bright future ahead of her.
