Zandkorrels
Handtufted rug and research publication (2025)
Nacht van ontdekkingen 2025, Days of ArtScience 2025
At the coast, sand is abundant. It shapes the landscape, slips through our fingers, and crunches beneath our feet. In her artistic research, Julia July took this simple material as a starting point to look at the world.
What began as curiosity grew into a search for attentive observation. In her process documentation, Julia recorded the steps of this research: from fieldwork in the dunes to tufting carpets in which grains of sand are abstractly represented. She explored the relationship between scale, material, and attention. What happens when we enlarge the smallest part of a landscape, a single grain of sand, until it fills our entire field of vision?
The microscopic images of sand evoked a need to create something tangible. This led her to tufting: a manual technique that allowed her to translate the sharpness and texture of sand into something soft, something that can be felt. The irregular shapes and subtle colors gained a new, physical dimension in another form. The soft material introduces gentleness in contrast to the rough structure of sand. The act of tufting is slow and rhythmic, almost meditative. It became a physical translation of the calm Julia also experiences by the sea. In her work, sand and textiles come together as small landscapes, meant to be explored with both eye and hand.
This project invites slowness and attentiveness. Within it, an unexpected world full of shapes, colors, and structures can be discovered. Even in something as small and everyday as a grain of sand lies meaning, if we take the time to truly look.
INDEPENDENT CREATIVE STUDIO FOR ART & DESIGN