Sculpture
In 2016, Julius Friedman’s friend, Louisville ceramics artist Martha Puckett, invited him to her studio to help fire sculptures. Puckett had invented her own unique firing method based on the Japanese ceramic technique known Raku. Friedman enjoyed the process so much he came back the next day and soon told Puckett “I've been thinking and I've decided to make rocks and fossils and stack them! The things that I love!” With Puckett’s assistance Friedman embraced an entirely new medium and created another body of work at the very end of his life.
Julius Friedman’s rural studio upriver in Westport, Kentucky was both his sanctuary and his workshop. The pastoral setting was a constant source of inspiration for his photography and, in his final years, his experiments in earth-work style ceramics. In the early 2000s, Friedman began building rock sculptures on his property. Drawing on artisanal masonry techniques, he eschewed glue, instead fitting the pieces together with tension and balance. Friedman called the growing network of structures “Rockopolis,” and at the time of his death in 2017, it was one of his principal creative pursuits. The aspiring architect of his youth seems to have never left, resurfacing later with the tenderness and care born of a life well experienced and lived.