This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
By Karl McCreary
Title: Julie Green Papers, 1983-2021
Predominant Dates: 1998-2006
ID: MSS GreenJ
Primary Creator: Green, Julie, 1961-2021
Extent: 1.5 cubic feet. More info below.
Arrangement: This collection is arranged into 5 series: 1. Photographs, 1983-2009; 2. Exhibit Information, 1989-2020; 3. Newspaper Clippings, 1986-2006; 4. Publications, 2001-2021; and 5. Moving Images and Sound Files, 2001-2008.
Date Acquired: 00/00/2018
Languages of Materials: English [eng], Japanese [jpn], Chinese [chi]
The Julie Green Papers document paintings and other art works created and exhibited by Art Professor Julie Green. Along with photographs taken by Green depicting their art, this collection includes publications featuring articles and announcements about exhibits of Green's work that were published in newspapers, books, articles, magazines, event programs, flyers, and posters.
The moving images and sound files feature recordings of interviews with Green broadcast on TV and radio programs. Two of the moving image files are related to "The Big World" exhibit which Green curated and produced in 2009. These files are available digitally upon request.
Julie Green was born in Yokosuka, Japan, in 1961. Julie's father, who was stationed in Japan with the U.S. Navy, returned to the U.S. when Julie was two and settled the family in Des Moines, Iowa. Though their childhood in Yokosuka was brief, Green developed an affinity with Japanese culture and art, returning there to reside for a year and a half in the early 1990s. Green explored this sense of being grounded in two cultures in a 1999 exhibition of paintings at the University of Oklahoma. This show, "Yoklahoma", blended together Green's cultural association inspired by their birthplace and their life in the American Midwest.
After high school, Green attended the University of Kansas to study art and earned a BFA there in 1983. They returned to the University of Kansas a few years later and completed a MFA in 1996. Green's teaching career began at the University of Oklahoma in 1997. In 2000, they joined the Art Department at Oregon State University as an assistant professor.
As an instructional specialty and a medium for their art, Green focused on painting. Their painted works occasionally incorporated elements of mixed media. One such piece, "The Hunting Season" was exhibited early in Green's career in 1986 and featured a painted sheet of woven paper attached by a string to a scrap of lumber. Green also worked on installation pieces for shows such as "Dead Dog Shrine" which they displayed at the University of Oklahoma in 1999. Over the course of their life, Green's artwork was exhibited in 42 different shows in the United States, England, and Japan.
Of Green's works that had garnered the most recognition was a series of paintings began in 2000 called the "Last Supper". Green used white porcelain plates as their canvas to depict representations of the final meal requested by death-row inmates before their execution. A blue mineral paint was chosen to portray the food and each plate contained the date of death and the state where the execution took place. Openly opposed to the death penalty, Green felt moved to illustrate the meals of condemned prisoners after reading newspaper announcements about periodic executions in Oklahoma that would include "menus" of what had been requested as the final meal. Passionate about the community building power of food and cooking, Green sought to use the symbology of food to encourage debate about what they perceived as a lingering injustice. In framing their art to communicate social concerns and ideas, Green credited the influence of Roger Shimomura, their major professor and mentor at the University of Oklahoma.
Vowing to keep the project going until "we no longer have capital punishment", Green continued to work on the Last Supper for 21 years. When they concluded the series in 2021, the total number of plates stood at 1000.
The Last Supper series received worldwide attention. Media sources as diverse as the New York Times, National Public Radio, Gastronomica, Ceramics Monthly, and Rolling Stone featured articles and interviews with Green on the plates and their message. First displayed at OSU in 2003 in a show of Art Department faculty works, plates from the Last Supper series have been extensively exhibited at a number of galleries, among them were: the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Bellevue Arts Museum, the University of Liverpool Art Museum, the University of Nebraska, the COPIA Museum of Art, Wine, and Food (University of California-Santa Cruz), and the Corvallis Art Center.
In 2018, Green began work on a series of painted plates that re-oriented the focus of the message embodied in the Last Supper. Through these new works, collectively called the "First Meal", Green represented food and stories associated with the first meal enjoyed after wrongfully accused death-row prisoners were officially exonerated and released. In 2023, the Oregon State University Press published the book First Meal which features a selection of plates from this series and details of stories behind Green's imagery in them.
Green received a number of awards and grants in support of their art. Among these included the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors, the 2015 ArtPrize 3-D Juried Award, an Oregon Arts Commission fellowship, and Hallie Ford fellowship.
Green died in 2021.
More Extent Information: 1937 photographs; 3 boxes; including 1 oversize box.
Statement on Access: Collection is open for research.
Acquisition Note: This collection was donated by Julie Green to the Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center in 2018 and 2021.
Related Materials: Art Department faculty and instruction at Oregon State University is also documented in a number of other collections, including: the Oregon State University Memorabilia Collection (MSS MC); the College of Liberal Arts Records (RG 143); the Gwil Evans Photographic Collection (P 082); the Oregon State University Historical Photographs (P 025); and the News and Communication Services Photographs Collection (P 057). Drawings rendered as scientific illustrations by OSU faculty and others are documented in the following collections: the Bonnie B. Hall Botanical Prints (MSS HallB); the Roger Hayward Papers (MSS Hayward); the Helen M. Gilkey Papers (MSS GilkeyH); and the Marian Field Collection (MSS Field). The Valley Library Art Collection Records (RG 297) contain details about artworks acquired as a part of the Oregon Percent for Art Program and installed in the OSU Library during that structures' renovation in the 1990s. Photographs and exhibit catalogs in the Watercolor Society of Oregon Records (MSS Watercolor) reflect artworks created by members of that organization, which was co-founded by OSU botanist and artist Tom Allen.
Preferred Citation: Julie Green Papers (MSS GreenJ), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
Green, Julie, 1961-2021
Art--Study and teaching (Higher)--Oregon--Corvallis.
Artists--Oregon.
Ceramics.
Death row inmates -- United States
Painted Pottery -- Exhibitions
Plates (Tableware) in Art -- Exhibitions
Shimomura, Roger, 1939-Artist.
University History
Digital moving image formats.
Posters.
Slides (photographs).
Series 5 is made up of digital files containing moving images and a sound recording. Of the four moving image productions in this series, three were designed to be displayed on continuous loop at two art exhibits organized by Julie Green. One of these was featured as a part of a showing of the "Last Supper" plates in 2003 and contains narration by Green. The other two exhibit-related videos pertain to the 2009 OSU show, "The Big World". The fourth moving image is a video clip recorded from a TV news broadcast reporting on an exhibit of the "Last Supper" at OSU. This aired in 2003 on the Portland-based Fox TV affiliate station.
The sound file is a recording of an interview with Julie Green about their "Last Supper" series that was broadcast on the National Public Radio program "The Splendid Table" in 2003. These files are available digitally upon request.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.