Julia Elsas was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and trained in printmaking and book arts, which she taught for about ten years in New York and New Jersey. In 2013 she signed up for ceramics classes in New York City, and clay became her primary medium. She launched her line of functional ceramics in 2016, starting with bead necklaces and wall hooks, and later added vases, candelabras and Judaica. Every piece is hand-built in her Brooklyn studio. ModernTribe carries her Galaxy and Splatter menorahs, and because each is made by hand, no two glaze patterns or shapes come out exactly alike.
Her sculpture practice is about sound. She looked to Nigerian udu drums and ancient ceramic instruments from Mexico and South America, then formed SONIC MUD so musicians could play her work; the group released its first album, Above Ground, in 2023. The Jewish thread runs through it: she was in the inaugural New Jewish Culture Fellowship cohort (2018 to 2019), created five ceramic shofars with musician Jessica Lurie for the 2020 performance piece Shofar Meditations, and showed work at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in 2023.
Good to know
- Stocked byWhitney Museum Shop, The Jewish Museum Shop, Museum of Arts and Design
- FellowshipNew Jewish Culture Fellowship, inaugural 2018 to 2019 cohort
- Recognition2023 Etsy Design Award finalist; featured in New York Magazine's Strategist
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