about this artist
Julia Munroe Mandeville (she/her b.1984) is a multi award winning artist and cultural worker. With the dream that we can make a joyous, just, and peaceful future by and for all, Julia amplifies artistic voices, nurtures cooperative leadership teams, and builds open public programs for lifelong learning, creative expression, self discovery, and collective impact. She interweaves roles including song/writer and book artist, civic and social practice artist, curator and producer, nonprofit leader and social impact entrepreneur, grassroots organizer and community advocate, and more. At 41, her portfolio spans three decades, ranging from intimate narrative excavations to vast immersive engagements.
Together with her collaborators, Julia has resourced thousands of artists and activists by co-creating hundreds of platforms, from solo site-specific commissions to 25,000-citizen cultural celebrations, and re-distributing over $15million to makers. Currently she serves as Chief Programs Officer of Harwood Art Center, Founding Artistic Director of SOMOS ABQ, and Founding Co-Director of Mirror Bridge. She's an invited full member of Democracy & Belonging Forum, Othering & Belonging Institute–UC Berkeley, and, with 100 women from 32 countries, a 2024-25 Women's Impact Alliance Catalyst Fellow.
Her prior staff positions include Director of Programs & Community Relations at Harwood, Associate Director of Programs & Communications at Creative ABQ, Founding Program Coordinator at Great Books Summer Reading Program, and Research Assistant to a Senior Curator at the Guggenheim Museum. She's served an array of cultural, social, and economic vitality initiatives via board or leadership roles, including Tricklock Company, Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program, MiABQ, Emerge ABQ, Women & Creativity, and more.
A lifelong singer and songwriter, Julia’s primary studio practice from 2014-2019 revolved around composing with Meghan Ferguson Mráz and Casey Mráz. As the trio Trip the Light Fantastic, with Meghan on cello and Casey on piano, guitar, banjo, and production, Julia found soulmates for her vocals and lyrics. Trip the Light Fantastic recorded 3 EPs and a rehearsal playlist. In 2019, Julia and Casey became primary home hospice caretakers as Meghan died of breast cancer at 34. When Meghan crossed over, the melodies Julia had heard in her head since childhood went quiet, and all that was left were the lyrical words.
In 2019, through a long dark night of the soul, Julia began channeling these lyrical words, deep griefs, and enduring creative energies into independent writing, research, and illustration. Her experiments grew into a multimodal open journal and book arts collection. Catalyzed by the loss of her grandmother and artistic mentor, Enid Campbell Hughes Munroe, Julia began publishing The Infinite Scroll Project in the pandemics of spring 2020. Following several volumes that were made in isolation and entirely digital, Julia moved to handmade book arts objects in winter 2022. She continues to release all volumes through this site — imagining it as an experimental living library, curious about reflection, expression, and inquiry as modes of re/generation.
For her creative writing and scroll making, Julia was selected for the 2021 International Writers Cohort & Creative Publishing Seminar at Center for Book Arts (NYC) and awarded a 2025 Creative Residency Fellowship at the Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences (GA). Her arts and advocacy writing also appears in publications including Edible Magazines, Hand/Eye Magazine, Adobe Airstream, ABQ Free Press, and The Weekly Alibi, where she was an Arts Columnist, and her illustrations in Remembrance: A Vision of the Sacred Feminine & the Renewal of the Earth by Alejandra Warden (Albion Books).
Recent press on her artistic practices and public programs includes Hyperallergic, Americans for the Arts Artsblog, NPR-KUNM, KSFR Santa Fe, New Mexico Living, Albuquerque Journal, The Paper, and Albuquerque Business First.
For these efforts, and among other past recognitions, Julia’s peers named her the recipient of National Philanthropy Day AFP-YNPN New Mexico Outstanding Young Nonprofit Professional of the Year Award; Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Scholarship Award; Local IQ Woman of Culture: 5 Women Driving Local Creative Industry Leadership Honoree; and Albuquerque Business First 40 Under 40 Award. Most recently, she was nominated and selected to receive a 2025 City of Albuquerque Creative Bravos Award.
The great/grand/daughter of working women artists and artisans, Julia channels multicultural lineage, universal liberation, and generational change with every breath. Based where the Sandia and Manzano mountains meet, she lives and makes in Albuquerque, on Tiwa Lands, with her beloveds James and Iris. Curiosity is her compass, and New Mexico is her meaning of home.
