Holly Holmes | Companions | September 8 - October 12, 2024
Towers of Knowledge, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
Exhibition Dates: September 8 - October 12, 2024
Opening Reception: Sunday, September, 8, 2024, 3:00 – 6:00 pm
Join us afterwards for a private cocktail hour across the street at the Quincy Street Distillery
Gallery Hours: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 1:00 – 5:00 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, October 5, 2024, 2:00 pm
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present Holly Holmes’ solo exhibition, Companions in the FlexSpace, curated by Gallery Director, Joanne Aono. Please join us on Sunday, September 8th from 3:00 - 6:00 pm for an opening reception with the artist. Join us afterwards for a private cocktail hour across the street at the Quincy Street Distillery. On Saturday, October 5th at 2pm, join Holly Holmes and the curator for an artist talk. All events are free and open to the public.
Holly Holmes utilizes painting and tufting to express her observations of physical spaces. Through these works, we become companions on her walks where she might sketch a view at a train station or from a porch, later combining them with her thoughts on current events and associated emotional reactions.
The paintings are rendered in flat, tight strokes with subtle patterns reminiscent of Phillip Guston, while the rug weavings bring to mind the abstract textiles of Anni Albers and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, bridging fine art with exceptional craft. As the eye wanders through Holmes’ vibrant blocks of color, it jumps from one angle to the next, only to be sprung about by a caressing curve. We flip between the edges and the shapes, conjuring up glimpses of familiar objects, then we step back and get lost once again. The titles give us clues and oftentimes affirmation of a perceived form in their simple poetry.
Like companion planting, where each organism provides a benefit to those adjacent, Holmes’ paintings and wall rugs nurture each other. Our experience is enhanced by the conversations between the artworks as we notice subtle nuances when comparing similar sections within separate pieces. The patterned speckles in her paintings evoke the texture of the yarns, while the hard edges of the paintbrush strokes contrast with the rough borders of the rug tufts. We notice a repeated shape or color from one piece to the next or across the room, giving a sense of cohesion throughout the exhibition.
– Joanne Aono
Over the past couple of years, I have been working with tension between abstraction and representation. The matter of facts, readings or translations of situations and elements of life resonate within me for many different reasons. In my work it is this resonance that I want to pass along to viewers. With my visual work and with the text of the titles I give rise to the friction of translation that the depiction of abstraction carries.
For me to create this current work it helps to travel outside my home. Home is wonderful and should be explored but there is an excitement and a bit of wonder that comes from leaving your known. I am always noticing details and visually studying the world around me, translating spaces, and experiences that were in and are in public view. I make this work from sketches in the studio and at times using memory and feelings to recreate the space as well.
There is an examining and reexamining process that occurs while making a work. This reexamining has also become a way of painting and color mixing when working with yarn. Recently I have been making my tufted and painted works in tandem as companions. That is both a painting and a tufted image expressing the same resonance or from the same subject situation. This enables me to make creative decisions more effectively. I am becoming a pointillist painter with yarn to create new colors or shades and to develop the tone of the pieces.
Paint is an immediate and fast medium, especially acrylic paint which I mostly work with. Changing a section of a painting or experimenting with color and pattern is relatively frictionless. Yarn on the other hand is a much more time consuming process. Experimenting with color requires careful blending of threads and meticulous consideration. By flipping back and forth between companions I am able to test out an idea in one place and realize it in the other.
For this exhibition I wanted to foreground this idea of companion pieces and see them together, adjacent to each other and encourage their conversations across the gallery. It is exciting for me to think about how their resonance echoes in the space and how the works operate in tandem across different modes of representation.
– Holly Holmes
Holly Holmes grew up in the Chicago area and currently resides in Oak Park. Holmes is a painter, sculptor, educator, planner and curator. She received a BFA in painting from Southern Illinois University and a MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently teaches at Columbia College Chicago. Holmes was on the board of Terrain Exhibitions, producing a residency program and the Terrain Biennial. She is a member of Videokaffe, an international art collective spanning locations in North America and Nordic countries.
Recently Holmes has shown her work at, Ohklohomo, Chicago; Sluice expo, Colchester, UK; Material, Chicago; The Design Museum, Chicago; Dominican University; River Forest, Il, Kunsthius Gallery; Crayke, UK; ArtTeleported, CICA; Queens, N.Y.; and Videokaffee at Art House, in Turku, Finland. Her art is held in public and private collections throughout the world.
Companions is Partially funded by a Part-time Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College Chicago
There is Wisdom in Waiting (2), 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 18 inches