“My figures serve as storytellers, stories of the sacred and the precious, capturing moments of our day, our vulnerabilities, and our strengths.”
Multi-media artist Holly Wilson creates figures that serve as her storytellers to the world, conveying stories of the sacred and the precious, capturing moments of our day, vulnerabilities, and strengths. The stories are at one time both representations of family history as well as personal experiences. Wilson’s work reaches a broad audience allowing the viewer the opportunity to see their personal connection. Wilson works in various media, including bronzes, paint, encaustic, photography, glass, and clay.
She has been exhibiting her intimate bronzes, photography, and encaustic relief paintings nationally and internationally since the early 1990s. Additionally, her works are in corporate, public, and museum collections throughout the United States, as well as national and international private collections such as; The Heritage in Oklahoma City, The Central Library in downtown Tulsa Oklahoma, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, the C.N. Gorman Museum, The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School, and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.
Wilson has received recognition for her artwork through her inclusion in important exhibitions, most recently, “Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now” that opened at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, then traveled. Wilson’s work has also been included in “Hear My Voice: Native American Art of the Past and Present,” a traveling exhibition from the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, Virginia. She was chosen to represent Oklahoma in the Museum Exhibition “Four by Four 2016: Midwest Invitational” at the Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri, and “Expressions of Spirit” at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. Wilson has received many awards, grants, and fellowships for her evocative sculptures, including a 2017 SWAIA Discovery Fellowship from the Santa Fe Indian Market and a 2015 Eiteljorg Fellowship from the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art.
Holly Wilson of Delaware Nation and Cherokee Nation is now based in Mustang, Oklahoma. In 2001, she graduated with an MFA in sculpture, and in 1994, she earned an MA in ceramics both from Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas; she received her Teaching Certification in K-12 Art from Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, in 1993; and in 1992 she finished her BFA in ceramics at the Kansas City Art Institute.
Statement
"Narrative is central to my work. I am interested in stories — the stories of my parents, my ancestors, my family, my community. I am a storyteller; through my work, I weave together the threads of these various narratives to create a tapestry that tells stories that are sacred and precious, personal and universal, powerful and at times volatile. Telling them brings to life things sometimes kept secret, hidden, and not permitted to be said because they challenge the status quo or reveal realities that neither side wants said.
In a strategic trickster twist, I feature children, often masked, as a tool to bring the viewer into my story that on the surface seems benign or sweet, but upon closer reflection addresses much deeper and challenging issues. Masks are multi-layered elements in my work. Simultaneously, they reference traditional Delaware and Cherokee stories that my mother told me as a child and symbolize transformation and obfuscation. Masks are a mechanism to hide or obscure our true intentions, acting as a wall between us and the world at times protecting us or others. They are also agents of transformation that allow one to become more than what they were, to become powerful or sometimes dangerous. The strategy is to subvert narrative expectations.
My work also addresses what lies beneath or in the shadows. Stories and narratives often have secrets lurking within. 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. The secrets take form in my work as shadows that hang in and around the forms, shifting as the viewer’s position shifts much like how secrets take different forms sometimes benign and sometimes nefarious."
