Julie Kahn Valentine: Quintessential Eureka Springs Artist
In the late 1980s, Julie Kahn Valentine was given the unique designation, “Artist-in-Residence” by the then-current Eureka Springs’ Mayor, Richard “Schoe” Schoeninger. The proclamation, stating that, “Creative talent is a cultural asset enhancing the quality of experience in and of Eureka Springs,” declared Julie a “contributor to the recording, capturing, portraying, and creative expression” of the town.
Schoe hasn’t been the only mayor who has recognized Julie’s gifts. When she was named Eureka Springs’ Chamber of Commerce Artist of the Year in 2004, one-time Mayor, Beau Satori, wrote a statement about Julie’s impact on the community, including referring to her as a “National Treasure.” Satori called Julie, “…the most prolific artist in our city,” and went on to elaborate:
Her illustrations have been used to promote events and businesses continuously since her arrival in 1970, and have been posted everywhere throughout the city. And, that’s just her commercial work. Julie Kahn’s paintings, watercolors, drawings, and pastels can be found decorating our restaurants, lodgings, and most of our homes.
However, as Satori also pointed out, Julie’s impact has not just been local. He explained that her illustrations have adorned murals, album covers, magazines, and newspapers throughout the world.
Julie says she was brought to Eureka Springs in 1970 by her then-husband, artist Joe Miller. When a friend in their Laguna Beach, California community had said, in reference to the town, “Artists are needed on the frontline,” Miller, who was familiar with Eureka, agreed it would be an ideal place for Julie to continue to develop her work. Directly before arriving in the Ozark town, Julie had briefly been living in New York City experiencing some especially tough times, and the tiny village, she says, very much felt like the safe-haven she was told it would be. She says she saw the town as “a fairytale that leads up to the castle on the hill.” Though she was immediately embraced by the hippie and counter-culture folks who’d been flooding to the area, Julie says she was always “just an artist.”
Though Julie has always been dedicated, first and foremost, to her art, the era of her youth was both undeniably influenced by, and an influence on, her work. In the ‘60s, Julie and Joe Miller, among others, founded the world-renowned, Sawdust Festival. A description on the festival’s website explains the aura of the time and place: “In the mid-1960’s, the culture in America dramatically changed. Personal freedom of expression broke out among the nation’s youth, including a vibrant arts and crafts movement. Here in Laguna Beach, that creative energy brought together an influx of young artists and craftspeople…” Further insightful is an announcement for a 2015 exhibit, Orange Sunshine and the Mystic Artists, which lists Julie as among those whose work was displayed at the famed Laguna Beach, Mystic Arts World. A description for the retrospective says the gallery was “…ground zero for hippie culture in Southern California during the late 1960s and early 1970s…” and explains that a, “…rich artistic and perceptual experimentation grew out of this burgeoning psychedelic culture.” Indeed, among experiences that Julie had at the time, includes an encounter with “LSD guru” Timothy Leary.
Julie says that when she first arrived in Eureka Springs, it was a small established artist colony, which she affectionately describes as “nothing but something.” There were lots of Ozark’s crafts on the art scene, but also works of the vanguard of Eureka Springs’ fine arts community that had been instigated by Louis and Elsie Freund. Ultimately though, she says it was the natural beauty and historic buildings that made her want to stay; the way the architecture and topography “all wound in together,” struck her as romantic.
Born in Kingman, Arizona in 1943, most of Julie’s childhood was spent in San Antonio, Texas. Never quite comfortable in Catholic elementary school, nor in public high school, Julie dropped out at age 17 to become a fashion illustrator. When photography took over the fashion world, she turned to fine art. Her skills were honed at several schools over the years, including the Hunter Art School, the Los Angles Art Center, the San Francisco Art Institute, Laguna Beach School of the Arts and Design, and the Art’s Students League in Woodstock, New York. Julie also studied under acclaimed watercolorist, John Pike.
In 1966, while living in Hawaii, Julie was a private art tutor to Jacqueline Kennedy’s children, John and Caroline. Often taken up by whim or circumstance, Julie’s life adventures have included stints of living in Paris, Rome, and Ibiza, Spain. Her life journey has also included a partnership in an art gallery in San Miguel Allende, Mexico; living on a kibbutz in Israel during the volatile political climate of 1967; and sailing throughout the Caribbean, culminating and briefly settling on the tiny island of Culebra, Puerto Rico. She’s also enjoyed creating desert landscapes during extended visits with her artist sister, Susan Kahn, in New Mexico.
However, the one place, other than Eureka Springs, that can most legitimately lay claim to continued benefit from Julie’s creative talents, is New Orleans. During the decades that Eureka has been her home base, Julie has consistently made temporary moves to the Crescent City, where she’s created dozens of Mardi Gras posters and innumerable portraits on Jackson Square. In 1984, Julie won a $1,500 contest to illustrate the journal cover for the “Sesquicentennial Celebration” of Tulane University School of Medicine.
Julie, who has said that “Art is struggling to communicate with others,” was one of the artists featured in the acclaimed 2014 film, “Eureka!” The Art of Being. Among her other credits is, earning a yellow ribbon in the 2nd annual highly competitive Eureka Springs Plein Air Festival, winning the 2003 Eureka Springs’ Festival of the Arts poster contest, teaching classes at the Eureka Springs School of the Arts, and illustrating an article and cover art for a national publication of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.
Julie’s studio and residence is a spacious apartment on the third floor of a historic building in the heart of Eureka’s downtown. It’s there where many of her fanciful, often tribal-like, beings come to life in settings that range from Edenesque jungles to vibrating geometric patterns. However, it’s not uncommon for the artist to be found in Basin Park set up with her easel to do portraits, or across the street from an historic wonder, with canvas, brushes and palette, or perhaps in a café, sketchbook and pen in hand, deep into another intimate detail of the human anatomy. She’s been known to remark to people she’s just met, “What a beautiful clavicle!”
Julie, who religiously pours over beloved, now tattered, anatomy textbooks, says her work is a “continual study of the human form as it relates to nature.” She explains, “I don’t want the trees chopped down, don’t want the air to be destroyed. Human anatomy can interface with nature, be part of the beauty, not just destroy.” Julie says she loves antique architecture and “the classical study of the habitats that this human form can fit in,” both in terms of Eureka’s historic homes and its unique geography. Julie’s architectural work includes renditions of approximately 80 of Eureka’s proud beauties, many of which can be found in her coloring book.
In her youth, Julie witnessed the early years of highways and what she calls “car-culture” destroying the natural beauty of southern California’s coastal cities. She’s intolerant of and devastated by, any such destruction in the Ozarks. True to character then, Julie is never reluctant to share her distaste for anything responsible for speeding up the pace of life or obliterating nature. All of this, in her estimation, also devalues appreciation for the aesthetics of fine art. Undoubtedly, part of her ability to so intimately depict Eureka comes from the fact that she, herself, is an avid walker, daily exploring the intricate details of the town.
Perhaps what most endears Eurekans to Julie is her ability, refined through years of diligent practice, to depict Eureka how we see Eureka: alive, whimsical, and magical. In Julie’s art, the quaint village’s natural and historical beauty is always in the forefront, shown off – with just the right hint of delicate pride and tasteful flamboyance – to our unyielding appreciation. Indeed, if it’s the challenge of artists to convey in images that which we feel and long to express, then Julie is certainly a true master.
Harrie Farrow
Communication Director
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