The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art is pleased to announce Unimaginable Units of Time, a solo exhibition by artist Julia Goodman. On view in the Museum’s Nybak Gallery September 5 through November 30, 2025, this is the artist’s Museum debut.
Bay Area–based artist Julia Goodman creates hand-formed paper sculptures from reused textiles, expanding the possibilities of handmade paper through a focus on sustainability, texture and history. Drawing on the overlooked tradition of gathering rags for papermaking, she collects cotton bedding and t-shirts from family, friends and thrift stores. These materials, embedded with traces of everyday life, bring forward the unseen labor of women and caretakers, past and present. Goodman tears and pulps the fabrics, forming and pressing them into shapes and textures that recall the moon, the imprint of her gripped hand, and the folds of bedsheets and t-shirts. Colors emerge directly from the original fabrics or by mixing together differently colored fabrics, without the use of dyes or pigments. In recent work, washes of watercolor respond to layered shapes and surfaces in her work.
For her exhibition at SLOMA, Goodman offers tactile, alternative ways to experience time. The wrapped sculpture An Unimaginable Unit of Time, begun in March 2020, marks the personal and collective passing of days during the pandemic. Each day, she formed an imprint of her grip in pulp along strips of torn bedsheets, resulting in a continuous line that ultimately stretched 0.95 miles. In Waning and Waxing, Goodman carves moon phases into large textured calendars, recording the eleven months she mourned her father and, years later, the nine and a half months of her pregnancy. Through handmade materials and labor intensive rituals, Goodman’s work holds space for cycles of love and loss, connecting us to the rhythms of time.
“Julia Goodman’s work draws on the materiality of handmade paper to reveal stories of memory, care and resilience. Her practice resonates deeply with SLOMA’s mission to connect contemporary art with lived experience, and we are honored to share her vision with our community.” — Emma Saperstein, Chief Curator, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art.
This exhibition is presented by Every Page Foundation. Unimaginable Units of Time, September 5 – November 30, 2025. Opening and artist walk-through in conjunction with Art After Dark: September 5, 5-8 p.m., artist walk through 5-5:30 p.m.