Ascend Limited Edition - Limited Edition of 20 Print

Julie Siracusa was born in the mid 1960’s in a small southern Louisiana town, Morgan City. At an early age she began drawing and creating collage pieces. By the time she was five, her mother enrolled her in her first formal painting class. The teacher told her mother that his class was not a babysitting service. Her mother responded with, “She’s not your average child, give her one class and you can decide if she is mature enough”. One class extended to the full summer session with Siracusa winning several awards for her early paintings. Siracusa’s mother is an expert seamstress. Her creative influence gave her daughter the tools and support to create whenever she wanted to express herself. She knew she was an artist as long as she can remember. Creative expression is not just a desire, it is her way of life. Siracusa’s father raced hydroplane boats professionally. The family would travel to the gulf coast and throughout Florida for the races. This is where she realized how much she loved water. In grade school, when a project offered a venue for drawing and sculpting she would participate. One of these first opportunities was a science project. Siracusa chose dinosaurs. She sculpted T-Rex, Triceratops and a Brontosaurus and created a prehistoric landscape for their display. Her backdrop featured large drawings of these magnificent creatures with facts about their characteristics. She would enter every science and social studies fair and most always won best in show. All of Siracusa’s school age years were busy with activities. From age four to nine she was a member of the local swim team which competed in swim meets throughout the state. When she was nine she began riding and showing quarter horses. Siracusa’s high school offered art class as an elective. She called that her “hour off”. She enjoyed her academics classes, especially mathematics, but art class was her comfort zone. At the end of each school year she would be invited to the awards ceremony thinking it was for the art award. Each year she was surprised by the math award as well. Because of her interests, college brought the study of architecture and fine art at the University of Southwest Louisiana in Lafayette. Siracusa’s time in architecture gave her the tools for problem solving for any project. This training paved the way for her to design and build her home, which is a centrifuge for her creativity.