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Paper Wings Fearless-Holly Wilson

PAPER WINGS: FEARLESS

PAPER WINGS: FEARLESS

21”x 23” x 13”, Unique Cast Bronze with Patina

It started with looking at my children playing and making their other world, if they needed wings they would make them from paper and sticks tied together. Their masks were transforming and all-consuming for them they believed and they became the bird.

We use a mask as a facade to be the thing we sometimes can not be, to fill that spot or give us courage.

Sometimes it is the unknown that we fear so we do not step when it is the step into that unknown that we need to live and breath. The figure prepares to fly away on her paper wings. It is a leap of faith that her wings will hold. In that moment she must be fearless to take the leap.

Available

For inquiries, please contact:
The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239

Exhibition History

  • EXPO Chicago 2023, (April 13-16) Center for Native Futures, Chicago Illinois
  • The Thread that Connects, Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin Missouri (January 14 – March 4)
  • On Turtle’s Back, Pauly Friedman Art Gallery, Misericordia University, Dallas, Pennsylvania (September 8 – October 11, 2022)
  • Holly Wilson: Talk Story, C.N. Gorman Museum, University of California-Davis (January 9-March 16, 2018)
Paper Wings Fearless-at CN Gorman Museum-Holly Wilson
Messenger in Red-Holly Wilson

Messenger in Red

Messenger in Red
18”x 21”x 6.5”
Encaustic, Unique Cast Bronze on Birch Board

It is the story of a Red Cardinal that comes close to you as if they are visiting you from a far, the carrier of a messages, whispered in the wind from one who was lost. They hold the hope of goodness and new things to come.

I have dreamed many times that I was a bird flying and then to awaken to see I am just a person. I create these birds with that hit of human with their eyes and our hands as we hold tight to the hope we hear in the wind.

Sold

Currently on view at MA Doran Gallery

For inquiries, please contact:
MA Doran Gallery
3509 S. Peoria Avenue | Tulsa, OK 74105 | 918.748.8700

Messenger in Red-sd-Holly Wilson
Messenger in Red
Messenger in Red-detail-Holly Wilson
Messenger in Red

 

I Am-Holly Wilson

I Am

I Am

12″ x 9″ x 2.5″, Encaustic on Birch, 2023

I am Resilience I am Resistance I am Powerful I am Still Here

Available

For inquiries, please contact:
The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239

Renewal The Belief in Hope-sv- Holly Wilson

Renewal: The Belief in Hope

They say that to grow a garden is to believe in hope; you must believe that the seeds you put into the earth will grow. The beauty of this simple act has captivated me since I watched my dad garden when I was very small. He would tie string so tight for the beans to climb that when the winds of Oklahoma would blow, the string would sing. It was as if the garden was a symphony in and of itself with the strings and the sound of the corn stalks rattling. The buzz of the bees as they made their way from flower-to-flower fat with the bright yellow pollen and the crackling hum of the cicadas in the late Oklahoma August months. I can close my eyes and am transported back.

“Renewal: The Belief in Hope”
Unique Cast Bronze with Patina and Birch Panel
40” x 30” x 8”

Sold

For inquiries, please contact:
The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239

Exhibition History

  • The Thread that Connects, Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin Missouri (January 14 – March 4)

Renewal The Belief in Hope- Holly Wilson
Renewal The Belief in Hope- Holly Wilson
Bloosline Building Community-Holly Wilson

Bloodline: Portrait of Community

Bloodline: Portrait of Community

Unique Cast Bronze, Patina, Cedar and Steel, 20” x 84” x 10”, 2022

There is the family you are born into and then there is the family you make. They are the friends you made in school, the neighbor’s you live by and the colleagues at your work. You watch the children grow and tell the secret wishes you have for them. You have meals together; you share in the joy the ups and the down and you bring them love and kindness when they have lost a loved one. We build an extended family that grows year by year and that makes for a community that is full of rich diversity, compassion, and love.

My mother told me of the “Stick People,” a Delaware/Lenape story; they would run through the night calling your name, beckoning you to follow; if you went with them, you were never heard from again. I am reimagining that story, now a story of family and friends. My family’s history—a complicated narrative of loss, erasure, survival, and resilience. The figures are made from real cigars and found sticks; I now call them “Cigar Figures.” Their faces are of the ancestors, family, and friends, echoing the form of a cameo or silhouette painting, capturing family images. They walk upon a cedar log from my land in Oklahoma; I have heard cedar called mother. She carries the people on her back, and we can see the paths made on her bark by the tiny animals that lived their lives below her skin. All these lives lived together as a community, listening to the secret dreams of our children whispered to the wind, growing year by year, full of life, compassion, and love, above, below, and here.

When hung, the light casts a shadow of the figures on the wall. This shadow represents memory for me. Like a shadow, these memories cannot be held, and in the end, we are all only a shadow in history, shadows on this earth.

Available

For inquiries, please contact:
The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239

Exhibition History

  • Seen Unseen, Feb 21 – July 14, Duhesa Gallery Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado

 

Bloodline Building Community-Holly Wilson-back

Bloodline: Building Community

Bloodline Building Community-Holly Wilson-sv
Bloodline: Building Community
Bloodline Building Community-Holly Wilson-front
Bloodline: Building Community

By the Light of the Fireflies We See Tomorrow

By the Light of the Fireflies We See Tomorrow
48″ x 80″ x 2″, Oil on Linen, 2023

Indigenous artists are often asked how we hold our heritage. I am not sure you can hold a feeling that runs deep inside each of us, just as the sound of the drums feels like my heart beating; this resilience is as powerful as an underground water current that even the earth cannot hold back. Resilience, Resistance, Power. We are still here.

I look at the land and my children, indigenous children, and their connection to their Delaware culture and histories; they are the caregivers to both the land and the lives upon the land. It is filled with the magic of fireflies and starlight, each holding endless possibilities for tomorrow and remembrances of yesterday. My great great-grandfather was Jim Bobb (1849-ca.1925), an Oklahoma Delaware Chief. Elements of his bandolier bag are layered into the patterns of the children’s’ graphic t-shirts as a way of encoding their indigenous culture within the piece; the youth carry the future of our people.

 

Available

For inquiries, please contact:
The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239

Exhibition History

  • The Thread that Connects, Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin Missouri (January 14 – March 4)
Wind Rider-Holly Wilson-Detail

Wind Rider

Wind Rider

Unique Cast Bronze and Patina, 17” x 48” x 8.5” , 2022

My children and I love to pick up sticks that look like birds or dragons. In the story I made up with my daughter there is a young girl who is playing outside when she hears a rustling in the bushes next to her, as she looks closer, she sees this beautiful dragon emerge with a long body and tail. They both stare at each other in amazement and then the dragon says, “Can you see me? Only MY Rider can truly see me.” The young girl tells the dragon “I can see you”, and then they rode through the skies for the rest of the afternoon. When her mom looked out the window, she only saw her playing with a stick, but for the girl, she saw her dragon, and she was the Wind Rider.

As we get older, I think we forget to see the dragons that are hiding in the sticks and that we can fly through the skies with our arms outstretched, feeling the wind pass beneath us.  I try to remember, never stop looking for the magic, and that our dreams can come true.

Sold

For inquiries, please contact:
The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239

Exhibition History

  • On Turtle’s Back, Pauly Friedman Art Gallery, Misericordia University, Dallas, Pennsylvania (September 8 – October 11, 2022)

 

Wind Rider-Holly Wilson-sv
Wind Rider

Wind Rider

Wind Rider-Holly Wilson-BV
Wind Rider
Wind Rider-Holly Wilson
Wind Rider
Holly Wilson-Red

Red

Red, is my daughter; she wanted to be Deadpool, a fast-talking superhero, though at the time she was not much of a talker. In that moment I wondered how will she be seen or heard as she grows in our current world. What mask will she have to wear to be considered equal.

As children, we make and wear masks to become anything we want or need to be. We can do anything in them, from being a superhero to a bird in flight. As adults, the layers and meaning of masks deepen and grow. They are a way to represent the different personas that we need or desire to be in life. Masks are an identity that one can live through or hide behind.

RED
Archival Color Photograph
mounted on 1/4″ plexi with museum mount
36″ x 24″

2, 4, and 5 available from the edition of 5

For inquiries, please contact:
The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239

In the Collection of:

  • Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
  • C. N. Gorman Museum, Davis, California
  • Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin Missouri

Exhibition History

  • The Thread that Connects, Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin Missouri (January 14 – March 4)
  • On Turtle’s Back, Pauly Friedman Art Gallery, Misericordia University, Dallas, Pennsylvania (September 8 – October 11, 2022)
  • Upturned Flower That Travels, The Volland Store, Alma, Kansas (November 6 – December 5, 2021 )
  • Holly Wilson: Talk Story, C.N. Gorman Museum, University of California-Davis
    (January 9-March 16, 2018)