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Biography

Video about Julia being a potter
Interview with Julia, Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast

Julia Galloway is a utilitarian potter and professor. She teaches ceramics at the University of Montana, Missoula. Julia has exhibited across the United States, Canada, and Asia and her work is included in the collections of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC, Long Beach Art Museum, Long Beach CA, the Ceramics Research Center at the Arizona State Art Museum, Alfred Ceramics Art Museum at Alfred University, the Dinnerware Museum in Ann Arbor Michigan and The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

In 2023 Julia was named the Artist of the Year by the Ceramics Arts Network / Ceramics monthly publication, awarded the lifetime NCECA honor as a Fellow of the Council by NCECA and was awarded the Arts Missoula Individual Artist award. Previously Julia was awarded a United States Artist Grant and named a Distinguished Scholar at the University of Montana, first person in the arts to receive the recognition since 1986.

Julia has served on the board of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts and is Director at Large on the National Council for the Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). Her work has been published in Ceramics Monthly, Studio Potter, Art and Perception and Clay Times. In addition, her work has been included in publications such as Mastering the Potter’s Wheel by Ben Carter, A Complete Guide to mid-Range Glazes by Jon Britt, as well as The Ceramic Continuum from the Archie Bray Foundation

Julia is interested in all aspects in the field of the ceramic arts from making pottery, jurying exhibitions, studying ceramics from other cultures, writing about pottery and service to emerging artist. She has juried the NCECA National Exhibition, the Zainesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics and the 500 Vases publication. Julia is dedicated to education, whether on a traditional college campus, a crafts school or local arts center; she has taught more than two hundred workshops, demonstrations and lectures. In addition, she has developed service based educational websites: “Montana Clay,” “the field guide for ceramics artisans,” as well as “Making History”.

Julia was raised in Boston and she started throwing in high school, buying her first wheel with her babysitting money. She kept her wheel in her bedroom and carried her pots in a shoebox to high school to be fired. Julia attended the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University for her BFA degree and then the Massachusetts College of Art as a Post-Baccalaureate student. Julia attended the University of Colorado-Boulder for her MFA degree, and during her studies she was a visiting scholar at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design to study contemporary crafts and the history of pottery.

Julia has traveled through the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy and Turkey. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. She was a professor and then Chair of the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, living in western New York for nine years. In 2009 she moved to Montana where she was the Director for the School of Art for five years, and rotated into full time teaching since 2014. Julia lives in Missoula, making pottery in her home studio and teaching ceramics, professional practices, and pedagogy at the University of Montana.