Meet Julia Bush of JUBU BABY in Agoura

Today we’d like to introduce you to Julia Bush of JUBU BABY.

So, before we jump into specific questions about what you do, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I have always been a creative soul and a dreamer. I grew up with a single mom who taught me how to entertain myself by using my imagination and whatever random materials were available to me. For as long as I can remember, I was allowed to go wild with paints and supplies in any format I wanted. This freedom cultivated a love and respect for the artistic process. In elementary school, my mom would pull me out to play hooky and we would go to art museums. The colors, the paint, and the stories that were shown through the artwork captivated my entire body.

Throughout my school days, I had many extremely caring and intelligent teachers and professors. They inspired me to carry on in their footsteps and become a high school visual arts teacher. I truly enjoy teaching the youth because they are so quick and smart, hilarious, and beautifully uniquely weird. I love to teach them about the varieties of ways they can express themselves through art, how to sharpen their fine motor skills through technique, and what I believe to be the most important aspects of life: being a good person and respecting themselves and others.

It was this year, in my fourth year of teaching, that I realized that although I adore and love my career, I had to stop always making it the absolute highest priority on my to-do list. I decided that I would no longer compromise my art-making, relationships, and exercise and that I needed to strike a better balance between multiple passions. This year was the first year I traveled to Europe. At thirty years old, I had finally accomplished a huge goal of mine- to go to Europe and see what I have been learning about for years in my art history books. I got to see and do so many things I had imagined and dreamed of for as long as I can remember. London to Paris to Venice to Florence to Rome. My mind was constantly blown and I could barely sleep from all of the stimulation and inspiration. I finally got to come home and explore what I had been envisioning throughout my travels. I can say that without a doubt, that the artwork I have created is exactly what I have always dreamt of doing but didn’t get there until now. I feel like I had been fighting and forcing other things to make sense when everything that I am doing now was always right in front of me. I attribute that to being older, wiser, knowing myself, and accepting and embracing what I know to be true about what makes me, me. I love to reminisce about my past. I love nostalgia.

This is where I am at today, in no particular order. I am a visual arts teacher at a local high school where I teach beginning, intermediate, and advanced 2D art courses. I am a fine artist who specializes in contemporary pop art. I am a dedicated wife, not yet a mother, but maybe soon. I am a friend who loves to listen and laugh. I am a woman who every day makes mistakes and tries to be better.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It hasn’t always been a smooth road. I came from a family with a very ugly divorce. My brother and I were separated between our parents and my mom and I struggled with money constantly moving from house to house. I was sexually abused as a child from a family member which I kept a secret for many years. Being sexually abused made me scared to express myself physically, sexually, and verbally in some cases. I was scared of males for a large majority of my life and still am in certain cases. Because of this, I had very low self-confidence and self-worth and sometimes I still do. I find it hard to ask the majority of people in my life what I want and need which makes it harder in both of my professions. These are all things that I work on every day and even though it makes things difficult, I see many positive effects that come from these circumstances. I can help my students work on their self-confidence as I don’t allow them to tear each other or themselves down. I have been called “too sensitive” in my life but I think that my sensitivity allows for more empathy for people in general. Being this sensitive to my environment and others is sometimes my downfall but is mostly my superpower.

What do you do, what do you specialize in, what are you known for, etc. What are you most proud of? What sets you apart from others?
I go by JUBU BABY. I am a visual artist inspired by Andy Warhol. My current work features 90s-00s consumer nostalgia with pop art and female sexuality into mixed media artworks. I also just started working on a side series called Guilty Pleasures that dives into today’s fixations and obsessions. I also create personal portraits in the Warhol-esque style. What sets me apart from others is that my artwork is completely original visually and conceptually. I use cultural media but I appropriate it to the max. I am proud that I am unique and that I am doing exactly what feels right- what I have always been about but didn’t embrace until now. All of my experiences have taken me to this place and nothing is forced, it is all coming naturally.

Here is my artist statement:
Growing up in the 1990s and 2000s, I became a slave to the world of popular culture. As a young girl, I was never without butterfly clips in my hair, mood polish on my nails, and I was constantly listening to the CDs of artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on my best friend’s boom box. Things were changing: I realized that I was no longer a little girl and that I was slowly becoming a woman. I wanted to know what all of these teen pop singers were talking about: sexuality, sensuality, and relationships. I had so many questions but nobody with experience to ask. I’ll never forget the time that I pretended I knew what I was talking about when my friend asked me, “What’s an orgasm?” She had seen it in the most recent Cosmo Girl magazine. I replied with preteen valley-girl confidence that it was, “Like, related to an organism.” Obviously, I had no idea what I was talking about, and I wouldn’t know for certain until I experienced it myself. I let these pop songs guide me in my intimate experiences as I was figuring out what seemed to be true in these songs and what seemed to be fantasy.

I knew all of the songs by heart, and I still do, but some of the lyrics took on different meanings as I became more knowledgable about life as a grown woman. If I listen back to a song that captivated me when I was young, it transports me to the same feelings that I had when I was of that age. When I compare my experiences to the words in these songs, I find conflict between being a feminist, a sexual woman, and a sexualized woman. The little girl in me still idolizes these artists as I continue to try to find a balance between the desire to achieve natural inner beauty and fight the urge to perfect myself through a glamorized, idealized appearance. Now that the 90s and 00s have come back into style, it is almost as if I am reliving it all over again. I find myself using this as an excuse to dive back into my youth as a now 31-year-old woman.

Taking inspiration from Pop Art and Andy Warhol, I decided to create digital images of cultural phenomena and celebrity teen pop idols. To mirror the consumerism and supply/demand model Warhol set, I repeated these images over and over to exacerbate the reality that I could never get enough of. After my digital images are ready, I print and collage them onto canvas or paper. Then, I create a background composed of lyrics to support the multiple female figures I place on top. The figures are nude, and only the most sexualized portion of the body is shown. Displaying the body cropped in this manner is meant to have both a negative and positive meaning. The song lyrics that are chosen display the conflict between the superficiality and actuality I have experienced. I then use various materials such as oil paints, alcohol markers, and colored pencils to accentuate the intense highlights and shadows of the female while preserving the midtone of the figure comprised of the digital images. I complete the figure by covering the nipples with smiley face stickers in order to juxtapose innocence and sexuality. The stickers comment on the boundaries that society places on what is appropriate and what should not be shown. Diamond Dust is used to draw attention to the dichotomy of innocence and glamour. The final result is a 90s-00s nostalgia aesthetic.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I am horrible at choosing favorites so here is a handful of memories from childhood. Walking the neighborhood streets with no shoes on, exploring in the creeks and finding tadpoles and crawdads, and playing in nature. When adults would ask us why we were wading in the creeks we would lie and say we had a science project. My best friends and I had a tree that we would climb and hang out in and we all had our spots that we decorated. Another huge favorite would be smushing my face into my orange cat, Hocus’s belly. Pretending to be Posh from the Spice Girls while Kylie was Sporty and Kim was Baby. I truly miss it when my mom used to sit me down and listen to how my day was. Spending time with my Italian Nana making pies and red sauce and that time the tomato juice squirted all over her face and we broke out in laughter. Making up weird written languages so we could pass notes in French class and mastering double-talk or gibberish so the boys didn’t know we were talking about them. Playing Sims on my neighbor’s computer and using all of the cheats so we could buy whatever we wanted and have as many babies as we wanted.

Pricing:

• Stickers – 1 for $5 2 for $8
• Warhol-esque Personalized Digital Portrait – $100
• 11X14 Prints – $200
• 3X4 Canvas – $2250
• 4X4 Canvas – $2500

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jububaby.com
• Email: jububaby.art@gmail.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/jubu.baby

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