Julie Solvstrom on friendships setting our world in motion

wearable art collab

Julie Solvstrom x Joeca (9)

Danish artist Julie Solvstrom collabed with 9-year-old Joeca from the SDN 004 Mentarang school in Pulau Sapi. Joeca loves playing outdoors with her friend and making paper windmills together.

Curious about our other wearable art collabs? Check them all out!

wearable art collabs

Joeca (9)

Pulau Sapi, Indonesia

Joeca is a 9-year-old pupil at SDN 004 Mentarang, living in the small town of Pulau Sapi in North Kalimantan. When thinking about her friendships, Joeca’s mind immediately goes to the outdoors, where she loves to play with her friends. If she were to visualise friendship, it would be a paper windmill: something that can only spin when the wind sets it in motion.

Julie Solvstrom

Vancouver, Canada

Julie Solvstrom is a Danish artist based in Vancouver, Canada. She grew up on a small island in Denmark, but as soon as she graduated, she packed her bags, moved to the big city, and never looked back. She is now known as a vibrant artist who lovingly combines visuals and typography. Her favourite types of projects are ones where she gets to work together with a creative team. Luckily, we had the perfect collab partner for her to create something magical!

wearable-art-collab-t-shirt-wallc-clara-wall-violenda-4.jpg

Friendship as a paper windmill

For her drawing, Joeca (9) was given the theme of friendship. The goal of the exercise was to see how she relates to the theme and what it would visually look like through her eyes. Joeca depicted herself and her friend playing outside with a paper windmill. Interestingly, most of the drawing is taken up by the surroundings, rather than the two friends.

shop this tee

wearable-art-collab-sweater-t-shirt-wallc-clara-wall-violenda-3-lr.jpg

wearable-art-collab-carla-walls-violenda-drawing-11_cf0fc19c-348a-4546-851b-9dbb52814d36.jpg

Making art together with Joeca

“I focused on the windmill because of the nice symbolism it represented. It became the centre and anchor of the illustration. I’m terrible at drawing people. I have successfully avoided it my entire career and have no plans to change that! So instead, I drew Joeca and her friend as two birds. There’s an innocence and presence to animals that you also find in children, so this felt pretty fitting. I drew some leaves to bring in nature and the outdoors, as that seemed important in Joeca’s drawing.”

shop this tee

wearable-art-collab-t-shirt-wallc-clara-wall-violenda-10-lr.jpg

wearable-art-collab-carla-walls-violenda-drawing-9-lr.jpg

“Friendship is oxygen”

“Friendship is oxygen. I simply couldn’t do without my friends. It’s having people in your corner. It’s the comfort and safety of the people who stick by you during the times when life knocks you so violently to the ground that you doubt if you can get back up. And it’s the people who celebrate your wins as if they were their own.”

shop this sweater

wearable-art-collab-sweater-wallc-clara-wall-violenda-4-lr.jpg

Julie’s collab with Joeca

“There’s a purity and innocence to kids being creative that we don’t appreciate at the time, but that we spend our whole adult lives chasing,” she continues. “To make art before society teaches you that art can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is so precious and painfully short-lived. I think there’s a bit of a heart-to-hand connection that gets a bit frayed as we grow older.”

shop this tote