Who is julie green the artist and what are her notable works?
Executive summary
Julie L. Green (1961–2021) was an American artist and educator best known for The Last Supper, a decades‑long project of painted ceramic plates that memorialize the last‑meal requests of people executed or condemned on U.S. death row; by the time of Green’s death the series encompassed roughly one thousand plates and was placed in a trust for long‑term care and exhibition [1] [2] [3]. Her work expanded into complementary bodies—most notably First Meal, depicting the first meals of exonerees—and was widely exhibited and acquired by institutions including Crystal Bridges and numerous U.S. museums [4] [2] [5].
1. Early life, training, and professional role
Born in Yokosuka, Japan in 1961 and trained with a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Kansas, Green later joined the faculty at Oregon State University and balanced a sustained studio practice with teaching; colleagues and obituaries note a career that included national media attention and awards such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant [6] [7] [5].
2. The Last Supper — concept and scale
Conceived in 2000 after encountering a newspaper item about an inmate’s final meal, The Last Supper is an open‑ended, research‑based installation in which Green painted last‑meal requests on second‑hand ceramic plates using cobalt blue mineral paint and then re‑fired them; the artist intended to add about 50 plates a year and to stop only when capital punishment was abolished, ultimately creating nearly one thousand plates over roughly two decades [2] [3] [8].
3. What the plates do — humanizing, documenting, provoking
Green framed the project as a way to foreground the humanity of condemned people and to use the ritual of food to open conversations about capital punishment and the criminal‑justice system; critics, curators, and Green herself described the plates as simultaneously documentary and elegiac, a visual archive that links ordinary human practices to fraught political contexts [2] [3] [9].
4. First Meal, Fashion Plate and other series
In later years Green developed related bodies of work, most notably First Meal (begun around 2018), which documents the first meals eaten by people exonerated after wrongful convictions and was intended as an “antidote” to the Last Supper project; she also produced work that engaged food, fashion, and gender questions in paint and ceramics, and presented these in gallery contexts alongside the plate installations [4] [10] [1].
5. Exhibitions, acquisitions and recognition
The Last Supper was shown in numerous museums—Boise Art Museum, Bellevue Arts Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Museum and others—and the project received institutional acquisition interest: Green placed the work in an irrevocable trust before her death, and Crystal Bridges finalized a gift of the series in 2023; her work won gallery awards, was reviewed in major outlets, and is represented in public collections [3] [2] [6] [5].
6. Methods, collaborators, and ethical dimensions
Green’s practice used found plates and a consistent blue‑on‑white palette, relying on technical assistance (notably Toni Acock for kiln firing) and archival research into execution records to render foods, words, or the notation “None” where no request was recorded; reviewers and Green herself acknowledged the ethical tension—using food imagery to humanize people at the point of state death raises questions about ritual, representation, and the aesthetics of suffering that curators framed as intentionally discomforting [11] [4] [8].
7. Legacy and ongoing stewardship
After Green’s death in October 2021, the artist’s executors and a Last Supper Irrevocable Trust sought institutional partners to conserve and exhibit the plates in perpetuity; Crystal Bridges and other museums now steward parts of the project, ensuring continued public access while inviting debate about capital punishment, documentary art, and memorial practice [2] [3] [6].