Julia Hechtman is a visual artist who makes works dealing with issues of agency and control, absence and presence and real-time experience in her multi-faceted studio practice. The natural world features prominently in her works, which has allowed her to travel extensively, and to contemplate the familiar in new ways. Her favorite place to go is the Arctic. In 2019 she was a Fulbright Scholar in Reykjavik at Lístaháskolí Íslands, where she pursued her research into the roles of landscape and memory in identity production. This fall she will be going to Svalbard, in Norway, to continue this research.
Melissa Pokorny is a sculptor whose work has been exhibited at venues across the United States. Solo shows at Devening Projects + editions in Chicago; Platform Gallery in Seattle; and Front Room Gallery in New York augment a long career of gallery exhibitions. Pokorny received her BFA in Ceramics, with a minor in Fibers from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California at Davis. Her professional exhibition career began in the Bay Area in 1989 with Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco. In 2001, she relocated to Urbana, Illinois and began exhibiting in Chicago with Bodybuilder and Sportsman. Selected group exhibitions include venues and project spaces such as Yerba Buena Gardens, Southern Exposure, Victoria Room, and New Langton Arts in San Francisco; Foodhouse Gallery in Los Angeles; Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois, Chicago; The Glass Curtain Gallery at Columbia College; The James Hotel, Devening Projects + editions, Heaven Gallery, and Slow in Chicago. Other venues include The Galleries at Illinois State University; Violet Poe Projects; DEMO Space; Terrain Projects; and The Richard Peeler Art Center at Depauw University. Her work is held in collections by the Orange County Museum of Art; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; The Richard L. Nelson Museum at UC Davis; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and The Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois.
A life-long educator, Pokorny is a professor in the Studio Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she also serves as the Executive Associate Director of the School of Art and Design. She has received multiple awards and residencies, including the University of Illinois Program For Research in the Humanities Ragdale Residential Creative Fellowship; an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship; multiple professional grants from the Illinois Arts Council; and the Efroymson Arts Fellowship. Residencies include the Skaftfell Arts Center in Seydisfjordur, Iceland; The Ucross Foundation in Ucross, Wyoming; and the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL.
Pokorny lives with her family in Urbana, Illinois.