Women’s Work Is in the Bags

Julie Wolfe’s mini bags resemble elaborate wall hangings that are simultaneously antique in handiwork and imagery and contemporary in their abundance of color, materials and symbols.

Using a xerographic heat-transfer process, the Laguna Beach designer duplicates images of the Madonna and other feminine icons from centuries-old artworks. This fabric portraiture becomes central to her bags. She repeats the photo technique with other feminine symbols that might appear less obvious, such as a budding rose or a voluptuous pear.

Wolfe stitches up a patchwork body of pretty fabrics--velvets, canvas, silk, upholstery and novelty prints. The piece is further decorated with hand and machine embroidery and a medley of ornaments: metallic threads, antique buttons, milagros pendants, strings of tiny pearls, glass beads, bottle caps, coins and broken pieces of mirror.

Each bag is finished by fringe, thick tassels or braided cord, not unlike the completing touches of a tapestry.

If they seem like they’d hang as beautifully on a nail as they would on a shoulder, it’s because Wolfe created the bags as an extension of her signature tapestries that are displayed in galleries and museums.

Like her tapestries, the purses follow a story, she says, that is mostly open to interpretation but always in honor of women. There might be signs of feminine strength or illustrations of the balance between motherhood and career.

“Most of my work is related to women and the history of women,” says Wolfe, 30. “I was brought up aware of how oppressed women artists have been--how oppressed women in general have been. I feel I want to validate their contributions through my own work.”

This desire lead Wolfe, who holds a degree in fine arts and art history from the University of Texas, to focus on the fiber arts.

“Women have always worked with fabrics: sewing, embroidery, crochet. But their work was not thought of as an art, but a household duty,” says Wolfe, a graduate of these domestic “duties” under her great grandmother’s instruction. “I want to continue that tradition.”

With this in mind, Wolfe refuses to mass-produce the well-crafted bags that sell for $160 to $300. (Tapestries run $800 to $1,500). “I want to keep them unique and intricate,” she says, “full of as much stitching and beading as possible.”

The vibrant palette, use of fancy materials and overall eclectic style of her work recall that of couturier Christian Lacroix, whom Wolfe credits with influencing her. As for inspiration, Wolfe refers to Mexican artist and feminist Frida Kahlo.

The home she shares with her husband, Thori and their daughter, 2 1/2-year-old, Hannah, reflects her passion for color and folk art as well as a taste for the surreal. It was in part growing up in Texas and the many creative jobs she had there that contributed to this sense of style.

After college, Wolfe designed children’s books for an Austin publisher and taught art to Latin American students attending a south Texas boarding school. During this time, she cultivated an appreciation for Mexican folk art and colonial churches over the border.

When she was 20, she stayed at a monastery outside of Florence, Italy, where she was exposed to all the possibilities of color through mosaics and stained glass, the regal beauty of ceremonial robes in the Catholic Church and rich artwork by Italian masters.

This experience encouraged Wolfe “to give a feeling (to her work) of being in a church in a peaceful, meditating sense. Not so much in a Christian sense,” she says, “but spiritual.”

She started the tapestries four years ago. The purses followed two years later as an affordable extension of her art and something she could manage from home part time, while being a mother full time. She continues teaching art to children through an outreach program at Orange County Center for Contemporary Art and after-school classes at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. And she spends summers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, taking graduate courses in textile techniques.

Usually hanging alongside the tapestries, Wolfe’s bags are available at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, the Newport Harbor Art Museum in Newport Beach and the Folk Tree Collection gallery in Pasadena. They are also sold at Robinson-Hallenberg in Laguna Beach and Screaming from L.A. in Los Angeles.