I make things. I have always made things. I am happiest when I am making things. I strive to make things that are both interesting and beautiful.
This is not a voyage of discovery for me. I’m not searching. I’m not exploring a theme or testing limits. I have no message. Rather, I am just amusing myself.
Like many people my age, I have suffered various traumas, both emotional and physical, from which I’ve never recovered. My work is not about these traumas. My work is an attempt to live with them. Quite simply, making crystal artwork gets me through the day.
My birth name is Julia Roshkow, but I prefer to work under the name Cartesian Graphics. I first began using the name Cartesian Graphics in 2003 when I was designing greeting cards. The term Cartesian refers to René Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher who, in 1637, introduced a grid-based system for locating points in space.
Although I haven’t designed greeting cards for years, I am reluctant to let go of the moniker which I think of as a stage name of sorts. In many ways Cartesian Graphics is a better name for me than my birth name, revealing much more about who I am.
My grid-based work is carefully considered, meticulously researched, precisely executed. In form it is substantially mathematical. I eschew spontaneity. And yet, I celebrate serendipity and have chosen crystals, with their mystical connotation, as my medium. So there is a deep emotional component as well.
Ultimately, I hope that my work encourages you, the viewer, both to think and to feel, to embrace both the mathematical and the emotional. And if my work can free your mind or lighten your heart even just the tiniest bit, then I will have done a credible job as an artist.
Julia Roshkow, September 2020