July does not have any art school or professional training — but nor is she wholly self-taught, having learned from and alongside an improvised network of artists, musicians, and writers she has worked with over the last fifteen years. After dropping out of college, July moved to Portland, where she lived for the next decade. She began performing spoken-word pieces at rock clubs; gradually, she transitioned into alternative art spaces, telling ever more complex stories that integrated audience participation and visuals ranging from slide shows to digital video.

During this time, she also founded Joanie 4 Jackie (formerly Big Miss Moviola). Joanie 4 Jackie was a non-commercial distribution system for women video-makers in the pre-YouTube mid-1990s. Any woman could submit a video short and July would put it onto a compilation tape with nine other videos; she then re-circulated these new ‘chain letter’ tapes so each video-maker could see what others were making. Joanie 4 Jackie was an explicitly feminist project, stemming from the anti-consumerist ethos of third wave feminism. Feminist concerns are also evident in July’s early short video works, which explored mother/daughter dynamics, voyeurism, and female spectatorship. In her videos The Amateurist and Nest of Tens, her characters hunt for or establish patterns, imposing their own personal systems of control onto the bewildering world around them. She extended these themes of unexpected longing and loss in Me and You, her short stories, and her recent performances.