About Julie Lake

Julie Lake is a Taos, New Mexico based artist working primarily in stainless steel and ceramics. Her relationship to material began in her father’s machinist workshop in central Illinois, where she developed an early respect for fabrication and mechanical discipline. She later studied metalsmithing in college, apprenticed as a bench jeweler, and worked in structural welding, experiences that shaped her fluency with steel at multiple scales.

For more than two decades, stainless steel has been her primary medium. Using a precise arc welding process, she fuses extremely fine-gauge wire into complex structures built through incremental joints. While welding is often associated with industrial production, Lake approaches it as a deliberate and intimate act, closer to stitching or knitting than construction, where repetition and accumulation guide the final form.

Her work draws from the structural logic of high desert plant life. Rather than literal representation, these botanical references function as models of material economy, adaptation, resilience, and growth. Precision fabrication and organic form coexist in these works, resulting in structures that feel both engineered and alive.

Over the past several years, Lake has developed a parallel ceramic practice which operates in dialogue with her steel work. Clay introduces weight, mass, and unpredictability, often grounding the open steel structures and expanding the conversation between industrial and earthen materials.

Her work spans installation, functional design, contemporary craft, and fine art, often moving fluidly between categories. Rarely does a single piece fit neatly into one definition. Instead, each exists on a continuum where disciplines cross-pollinate and inform one another, resulting in a cohesive visual language across the varied facets of her making.

Lake’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos and during Milan Design Week. Her sculpture is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Craft (now at Willamette University), and she recently received support from the Center for Cultural Innovation. In 2023, she founded Lake Object, an artist-run showroom and gallery in Taos that presents her work alongside a small, curated group of local contemporary artists.

SELECT EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS / AWARDS

2025. New Mexico Arts. Art in Public Places Portfolio Acceptance.

2025. The Fall Edition. Curator. Lake Object. Taos, NM.

2025. Material Stories: Pieces from the Elsie Michie Art Jewelry Collection. Curator. Lake Object. Taos, NM.

2024. A Mind of Winter. Curator. Lake Object. Taos, NM.

2024. Center for Cultural Innovation / Maxwell Hanrahan Foundation Grant Awardee.

2024. Zimmerman and Lake: Settling Dust, Chapter Two. Lake Object. Taos, NM

2024. Zimmerman and Lake: Settling Dust, Chapter One. Lake Object. Taos, NM

2023. Opened L.O. Showroom & Gallery. Taos, NM

2020. Windows on the Future. Taos, NM

2019. Gioielli in Fermento. Castel San Giovanni, Piacenza, Italy

2019. Milan Design Week. Outsidelounge. Galleria Rossini. Milan, Italy