Julynn Wildman
Helena, MT
Exhibit Year: 2023-2024
About the Artist
Julynn Wildman is a dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist based in Helena, MT. She grew up in Colorado, splitting her time between the Western Slope and the Denver Metropolitan area. This stoked a lifelong pursuit in the complements and contrast of natural sciences and human cultural vibrance.
Julynn graduated summa cum laude from Bard College at Simon’s Rock in 2013 with a BA in Cross-Cultural Relations and Dance. She pursued coursework in Interdisciplinary Art and Media at Columbia College Chicago before relocating to Helena for a tenure with AmeriCorps, serving at ExplorationWorks! Science Center.
Julynn’s choreography has been featured in student showcases and professional productions alike. She was a contributing choreographer for Cohesion Dance Project’s Resonance ~ an evening of Art Inspiring Art (2018-2020) and in 2018, presented Death of Others, an original community based performance exploring grief and empathy. In 2020, Julynn received a fellowship through Intrepid Credit Union and the Holter Museum of Art to create Body in Motion, a dance film and immersive installation exploring evolutionary biology and comparative anatomy. As a performer, Julynn has danced in many stages and sites throughout Montana, notably as a soloist in Cohesion Dance Project’s Nutcracker on the Rocks (2013-2019) and Resonance ~ an evening of art inspiring art (2018-2020) and as a guest performer in What’s Going On (Vincent Thomas Dance, 2017), Cave (Amber Moon Peterson, 2017), and Beyond Words, the body as narrator (Jennifer Glaws, 2022).
Julynn’s teaching practice is vital to her creativity. She is a Montana Teacher Leader in the Arts through the Montana Arts Council and the Montana Office of Public Instruction. She has taught art, dance, and creative movement in schools, residential living facilities, group homes, dance studios, and non-profit arts organizations. Her span of students includes early childhood, adolescents, adults, geriatrics, and individuals with special needs and physical or developmental disabilities.
Julynn Wildman is an MT Open AIR Artist.
Artist Statement
My art practice focuses on dance complemented with visual arts, digital media and writing. I generally use these media to explore social and scientific subjects including evolutionary biology and emotional health. I balance academic and artistic pursuits, diversifying the way I think about and explore subjects; while much of my research involves books and articles, a lot of it also involves movement improvisation, sketching and freewriting. I think each branch of this exploration allows a different angle at which to explore a subject and each medium provides a unique way to share with others.
In addition to my studio practices, my creative practice is greatly informed by teaching. I thoroughly enjoy witnessing and encouraging the creative journeys of my students and appreciate the opportunity to see things at new angles. Teaching also gives me a chance to share the tools and practices I find most relevant for a budding artist. This in turn gives me a chance to think about the fundamentals of my own craft and how to share these concisely. Teaching also gives me time to articulate some of the more vital components of a healthy creative practice: the importance of persistence, how to treat balance as a practice instead of a destination, how to release expectations of perfection and deal appropriately with frustration, and how creativity begets creativity.
While the content and the form of my art varies, I have a consistent approach to creativity that uses humor, collaboration, and multi-disciplinary learning in order to share wonderful things. It is said that a dance has three lives: one in the mind of the choreographer, one in the body of the dancer, and one on stage as it is experienced by the audience. I strive to extend the lives of my art practice to students, audiences, collaborators of other disciplines, and beyond.