You know the day destroys the night. Night divides the day. Tried to run. Tried to hide. Break on through to the other side. Break on through to the other side. Break on through to the other side. - The Doors
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It may have been in part a lack of social skills that led me to create an alternative reality instead of fully participating in the one that I lived. In the high school art room I preferred to paint imaginary landscapes of places I would rather be, while my oversexed classmates talked about their weekends and listened to The Doors and Led Zeppelin almost exclusively. I spent hours inside my bedroom staring into the mirror, drawing images of myself staring back. That time alone became decidedly important, because when my father would enter without knocking, I always flashed him a glare of death at being disrupted. This auspicious awkwardness of adolescence forced an inner escape where the world in all its unknowing somehow made sense. I was seduced by graphite impregnated paper, intoxicated by colors dancing upon pavement and singed several eyelashes gazing longingly inside kilns breathing with fire. Within pleasure and discipline, I still live somewhere in between, tongue tied by visual language.
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Holly grew up in Massachusetts with an early interest in art. She received her BFA in Ceramics from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in 1996. She then went on to develop her artwork at residencies around the country such as Mendocino Art Center, which led to exhibiting in the figurative art scene of Davis and the Bay Area, where she also completed public art commissions in Sacramento. She completed her MFA in ceramics at Arizona State University in 2007. Artist residencies at Anderson Ranch Art Center and Carbondale Clay Center brought her to the vibrant artist community of Colorado. After traveling around the country for twelve years, in 2011 she returned to her home state to do a residency at Mudflat Studio in Somerville MA, where she currently maintains her studio. She works as art restorer by day, balancing her time between ceramics and comics.