Julie Lapping Rivera began her career in New York, working as a teaching artist with the Studio In a School, the Museum of Modern Art and the Lincoln Center Institute. She was awarded a fellowship in drawing from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has received Arts in Education grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Art residencies include Soaring Gardens in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, and La Muse, in La Bastide, France. She was awarded a 2022 visiting artist residency at Scoula Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy.

Rivera is teaching printmaking and drawing at Smith. She is on the faculty of Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, Massachusetts, and works as a visiting artist throughout the country. She works primarily in woodcut combined with collage. Her work often includes collaboration with artists and poets. Her most recent collaborative projects are a sculptural installation at Art in the Orchard in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and an ongoing portrait and poetry project honoring under-recognized women in history.