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)
In a strategic trickster twist, I feature children, often masked, as a tool to bring the viewer into my work. Masks are multi-layered. They are a mechanism to hide or obscure our true intentions, acting as a wall between us and the world. Masks are also agents of transformation, powerful and sometimes dangerous.
My work attempts to explore what lies beneath or in the shadows. I am intrigued with the power of these shadows in our lives and how they haunt us or make us doubt our reality, at times even terrorizing us. I consciously incorporate shadows in my work by controlling the lighting and relationships of the figures, giving form to the secrets that linger in our lives.
GHOST OF THE DEAD
Archival Color Photograph
mounted on 1/4″ plexi with museum mount
24″ x 36″
1, 2, 3, and 5 available from the edition of 5
For inquiries, please contact: The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239
In the Collection of:
C. N. Gorman Museum, Davis, California
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)
My work attempts to explore what lies beneath or in the shadows. I am intrigued with the power of these shadows in our lives and how they haunt us or make us doubt our reality, at times even terrorizing us. I consciously incorporate shadows in my work by controlling the lighting and relationships of the figures, giving form to the secrets that linger in our lives.
Archival Color Photograph
mounted on 1/8″ plexi with museum mount
24″ x 36″
1, 3, 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:
C. N. Gorman Museum, Davis, California
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)
Currently on view in a Solo Exhibition
“On Turtle’s Back”
September 8 – October 11, 2022
Pauly Friedman Art Gallery
Misericordia University
301 Lake Street
Dallas, PA 18612
1.570.674.8420
For inquiries, please contact: The Studio
Mustang, OK 73064 | 405.308.0239
IN THE COLLECTION OF
Pauly Friedman Art Gallery, Misericordia University, Dallas, Pennsylvania
Exhibition History
On Turtle’s Back, Pauly Friedman Art Gallery, Misericordia University, Dallas, Pennsylvania (September 8 – October 11, 2022)
2017, 29” x 11.5’ x 9”, Unique Cast Bronze with Patina, Cedar, and Steel
The figures walk across a cedar tree base that is cut lengthwise exposing the rough center revealing the lines that show its life and history. Growing up, my mother would use cedar to purify our home, release spirits, and chase away bad dreams. That smell for me is home. I de-barked the exterior but kept the curve of the tree and its raw surface. You see the figures walking through time—their life above and the tree’s life below.
The Cigar Figures come from a childhood Native American story that my mother told of the “Stick People.” The “Stick People” would run through the night and call your name; if you went with them, you were never heard from again. She never described the figures and I was always drawn to the idea of what they looked like. The Cigar Figures are my reimagining of that story, now a story of family and my past—a complicated narrative of loss, survival, and resilience. The figures are made from real cigars and found sticks cast in bronze. The faces are of the ancestors from my past as far back as I can trace.
There are sections for each generation, beginning with my children. Though I only have two, there are five figures. Each life is counted and the children who did not survive are remembered with a place on the wood in history; their forms small and their heads bowed. Next, I have my section with my sisters and brother followed by my mother’s history. 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.”
29″ x 22′ x 9″, Unique Cast Bronze with Patina and Locust Wood
It is the stories of family, history, and identity that brought me to “Bloodline”. It is a long trail of my Native American history, my bloodline. To be ‘on the Rolls’ as an American Indian you must prove a quantum of blood verified through birth and death records until you match up to a name on the official “Dawes Rolls.” As I began walking through the past to document my blood, with the names and some faces, I wanted to hear them speak and tell their story. I wanted them to be counted.
The figures walk across a Locust tree base that came down in a storm. It is cut lengthwise exposing the rough center revealing the lines that show its life and history. I de-barked the exterior but kept the curve of the tree and its raw surface. You see the figures walking through time—their life above and the tree’s life below.
The Cigar Figures come from a childhood Native American story that my mother told of the “Stick People.” The “Stick People” would run through the night and call your name; if you went with them, you were never heard from again. She never described the figures and I was always drawn to the idea of what they looked like. The Cigar Figures are my reimagining of that story, now a story of family and my past—a complicated narrative of loss, survival, and resilience. The figures are made from real cigars and found sticks cast in bronze. The faces are of the ancestors from my past as far back as I can trace.
There are sections for each generation, beginning with my children. Though I only have two, there are five figures. Each life is counted and the children who did not survive are remembered with a place on the wood in history; their forms small and their heads bowed. Next, I have my section with my sisters and brother followed by my mother’s and father’s history weaving back and forth. 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.
2013, 9.5” x 3.5” x 9.5”, Unique Cast Bronze with Patina, and African Mahogany
In so many things there is a thin line that on one side you are in complete joy and the other complete devastation. The space between the two emotions seemed like it should be so much farther apart from one another than it truly is.
2018, 36″ x 24″ x 4.5″, Crayola Crayon, Plex Glass, Birch Panel
When I close my eyes and dream I do not see the color of my skin or limitations that have been placed upon me because of who I am or where I come from, I dream of all the possibilities of all the amazing things I can achieve.
While getting my children ready for school we were pulling together pencils, folders, colored pencils, and crayons. They had to have 4 sets of 24 crayons each and we had leftovers from sets of the past years, some colors had never been used, and we were combining them together so we’d know how many new boxes would be required. The kids were talking about their friends at the new school and friends of their past school. In the conversation, they were describing the children “the girl with the yellow hair, the boy with the brown skin”, in a very casual descriptive manner with no malice to the differences. This made me think more about how we see people and how one is judged. The smell of the crayons, the vivid colors, and the thoughts of my youth brought me to this crayon project. How we change in our viewpoints of people, and how we judge people based on race and color. We are all one below that surface, that surface of the skin, no matter the color, the shape, or the origin.
