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In the quiet privacy of her home studio, student-artist Julia Harley is building a body of work that is heartfelt, visceral and uncomfortably magnetic. Her watercolor painting, titled Pour Your Heart Out, which she shared at the this year, is just one example. It depicts an elegant, classic domestic scene of a tea party, but the focal point strays from the traditional politeness and high society of a tea party. In place of the traditional porcelain teapot sits an anatomically accurate human heart, dripping blood into two teacups already filled to the brim. 

Harley is currently completing her at with a communications emphasis. She is passionate about using her art to challenge traditional spaces. For Harley, the provocative imagery is a culmination of her past training in the fine arts, her lived experiences and the knowledge and toolsets she is acquiring in her current academic studies at �黨��ý 

The concept for Pour Your Heart Out didn’t manifest overnight. Harley had been wrestling with the imagery for nearly a year before it came together. The breakthrough came in her Feminist Art class taught by �黨��ýProfessor, Dr. Norah Bowman. Bowman introduced the class to Womanhouse — a 1972 art installation in which a class of feminist art students and their professors reconstructed an empty house as an immersive, embodied, sculpture of woman's experience of patriarchy. Inspired by this and powerful pieces of painter Artemisia Gentileschi, Harley found the missing puzzle for her own concept. 

“Pour Your Heart Out is about women having to be on all the time, having to give all the time and how draining that is,” explained Harley. “Especially with women and the expectation that you have to be on all the time and you have to be pretty and you have to be funny… It feels like you’re hosting a party all the time. So, I made it a tea party.” 

The choice of a tea set carries layered meanings for Harley. On a cultural level, it speaks to modern internet trends like the "trad wife" phenomenon, which aims to push women back into isolated domestic roles. On a personal level, the motif stems from her childhood. Harley’s father was from England, and she shared he was also abusive which made the traditional English tea set became the perfect physical representation to dissect internal patriarchal control, family dynamics and survival. 

"Feminist Art Studies makes space for students like Harley to combine critical thinking about complex social issues with personal experience,” explained Bowman. “Julia is a deep thinker, and she showed her learning through her painting. Her project in this class really moved me, and I know it was meaningful to the other students as well." 

Harley’s creative endeavours are heavily reinforced by her coursework. While she admits she intentionally limits her exposure to mainstream news cycles to protect her mental health from the relentless wave of disheartening headlines, she uses her studies to analyze the undercurrents of the digital world. Recent cultural markers — such as the celebration surrounding astronaut Christina Koch becoming the first woman to orbit the moon on the Artemis II mission — evoke a thoughtful duality for her.  

“I love space; I’m a lifelong sci-fi nerd, to be honest,” Harley admitted. But she notes that the milestone brings an inevitable systemic tension. “You have these genuine celebrations and then it also feels like you’ve taken one step forward and 1,000 steps back. There's often something opposing these celebrations that is disappointing. But through our communication courses at OC, we analyze this cultural pushback and evaluate how media "catches fire" and how misinformation, conspiracy theories and online misogyny spread.” 

Originally from the Barrie area in Ontario, Harley moved to New Brunswick for art school before relocating to Kelowna to live with family. Arriving at Okanagan College as a mature student, she had some reservations about whether she would find genuine social and intellectual peer connections. But those worries quickly dissolved. 

“I was surprised at how nice everyone is here,” shared Harley. “I'm a mature student, so I didn't know if it was going to be a lot of people younger than me, if I was going to be able to make connections with people or not. But I've found so many people who I've been able to make connections with, and that's been great.” 

Harley is an advocate for the validity and societal necessity of arts education. “People see the word ‘arts’ and they think that they’re not going to get a job or it’s not going to be a real degree, and that’s just not true,” she said. “You learn so many important things in the arts courses, including the critical thinking skills that are so important to have in life and in your work, particularly in this era of anti-intellectualism where a lot of people are only getting their information from the internet.” 

With another year left in her Associate of Arts journey at OC, Harley is hard at work expanding her portfolio from her home studio. She has also gained valuable local experience designing the promotional artwork for the annual Feminist Horror Festival at UBC Okanagan (UBCO), for the past two years.  

Kelowna, the city where Harley is building her practice, — ahead of Vancouver and Quebec City — a measure of what a community gains when it takes arts and culture seriously. Okanagan College is part of that story, with programs that meet creative learners at every level: from students completing a full Associate of Arts degree to those just beginning to explore through a single elective. 

Guided by recommendations from her professors, one of Harley’s goals is to join downtown Kelowna's Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art and translate her private collection into her first local public solo exhibition. For Harley, continuing the series is an intentional way to keep unpacking the complex themes she is studying. And she intends to keep pouring her heart out — one canvas at a time.  

For more information about the Arts programs offered at Okanagan College, visit .