Julia Samuels was born in 1985 and raised in Portsmouth, NH, until she made a fateful move to New York City at the ripe age of 18. Since that brisk fall in 2003, Julia has hit the ground running and has never looked back. Of corse, she does travel back to the mother land for an occasional Rosh Hashanah or Hanukkah, but she certainly prefers when her family and friends come to visit her in the big apple.

Julia studied at Pratt Institute and was awarded a BFA in Printmaking (with highest honors) and a minor in Art History in early 2007. During her career at Pratt, Julia learned and developed an un-dying love for all forms of fine art printmaking, and she was able to exercise that love in Venice, Italy for two months during her last semester.

Since graduating, Julia's ambitions have torn her in two opposing, but oddly related in a too-roundabout way to explain here, directions, and she has been attempting to reconcile those differences for some time. Her day job is managing a pedicab business out of Chelsea. There she is responsible for anything that ever lands on a sheet of paper. She is constantly talking with advertising agents trying to sell them on the idea of "eco-mobility." Those that do buy into it, buy big and buy again. That's one of the big selling points. Julia is also the co-owner of Chicago Rickshaw, http://www.chicago-rickshaw.com, a Chicago-based clone of the Manhattan company. Julia enjoys working with the pedicabs because it gives her an ability to flex her management and entrepreneurial muscles while trying to make a little money and trying to make a difference in the world (the whole carbon footprint thing).

While much of her days can be consumed with the trials and tribulations of running two small business, Julia still exhibits a strong passion and commitment to printmaking and the fine art community. She has taken on the roll of managing the printmaking workshop at the Gowanus Studio Space, http://www.gowanusstudio.org, where she is responsible for maintaing the equipment and chemicals needed in the shop and also hosting workshops, and publishing various printed materials for the studio.

She is a self-publishing artist, and her work is photo-based environmentally conscious. Her current form begins by snapping photos on the highway of high-tension power line towers, and then she brings the images into the studio and converts them into fine prints.

She hopes to return to school to get her MFA in Printmaking so she can become a printmaking professor at various NYC-area colleges. She also hopes to publish prints for artists professionally. All in due time.

As if that weren't enough, Julia loves cooking in general and baking in particular. Winter is her favorite season. She loves to ski, and eat seafood, but not at the same time. She loves road trips and traveling abroad (who doesn't?) and is trying to save up for a trip to London, or Germany.