Project Type: Studio Works

February 24, 2023

Portrait of Coyote and the Anguish of Mortality

Portrait of Coyote and the Anguish of Mortality
Mixed Media, pastel, pencil, conte, charcoal, on Stonehenge Paper, 30” x 22”, 2022

February 8, 2023

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”

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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

January 22, 2023

Bloodline: Building Community

Bloodline: Building 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

January 17, 2023

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.

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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

November 20, 2022

I Am Not a Trophy

I Am Not a Trophy
2021, 31” x 7”x 4.5”, Unique Cast Bronze with Patina, Cedar

We are not a thing to be collected we are each individual, holding more than a time in our cultural history which has been frozen, largely erased, and then romanticized into a historical loop of time.

June 18, 2022

Lost Within My History

Lost Within My History

Unique Cast Bronze, Patina, Glass, Brass, 14” x 6” x 6”, 2022

As a young girl, my dad had these amazing, beaded works of art that he made, and from time to time, I would start but then stop or walk away from learning, leaving pieces in mid-process. I was young, then later my life was busy, and one reason after another kept me from history and time. My dad has passed away, and that time I could have spent with him learning and hearing his stories of how and why the thread it pulled through the beeswax and the cut of the bead and the way to hold the needle is lost. I lost not just the history but him and that time with him. I am now looking to teach myself these ways, and I hold him in my mind and my heart as I go forward.

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For inquiries, please contact Bonner David Galleries