A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Black and white selfie of Holly Holmes, an adult person with a fair skintone, dark hair, and glasses.

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Holly Holmes

Lecturer

she/her

Contact

Bio

Holly Holmes is a painter, sculptor, artist and curator. She received a BFA in painting from Southern Illinois University and MFA in sculpture from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. She makes abstract work from reacting to the world around her. She is teaching at Columbia College Chicago and SAIC. Holmes is a member of Videokaffe, an international art collective spanning locations in North America and Nordic countries.

Recently she has shown her work at, Columbia College Chicago, Il; Galerie Herold, Bremen, Germany; Heaven Gallery, Chicago: Bert Green Gallery, Chicago; Riverside Art Center, Riverside, Il; Epiphany Art Center, Chicago;  Ohklohomo; Chicago; Sluice expo, Colchester, UK; Material, Chicago; The Design Museum, Chicago;  and Dominican University; River Forest, 

Awards

NTT, Travel Grant, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2026; Faculty Development Grant, Columbia College Chicago, 2024; Faculty Development Grant, Columbia College Chicago, 2023

Publications

by Vera Scekic | February 25, 2025; https://art.newcity.com/2025/02/25/natures-wonder-a-review-of-holly-holmes-at-bert-green-fine-art/; 2024 Chicago Gallery News, https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/events/holly-holmes-reverberations; Jason Foumberg | April 23, 2013, https://art.newcity.com/2013/04/23/eye-exam-chicagos-first-3d-printing-facility-is-open-to-the-public-2/

 

Exhibitions

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS: Findings, Burt Green Gallery, Chicago, Il. Jan.- March 2025; Reverberations, Epiphany Arts Center, Chicago Il, Nov - Jan; Companions Riverside Art Centers, Riverside, Il Sept. 2024; Secret Garden, Ohklahomo Gallery, Chicago Il, June - Aug. 2024; Resonant Spaces, Material Exhibitions, Chicago, IL, 2023; All Thou Lost, Bring It Too Day, Compound Yellow, Oak Park, Illinois 2020; Transcription, Terrain Exhibitions, Oak Park, IL 2012; Distress, GARDENfresh, Chicago, IL 2008; Bucket Rider Gallery, Chicago, Il, 2003; Everything, Everything, Everything, Jinx Cafe Chicago, IL 2002

SELECTED TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS: Color as Form, Gallery Andreas, Stamford, CT. 2026; Through the Looking Glass, Cultural Center Window, Chicago Il. 2025; Copy Shop, University Illinois, Springfield IL (with Tom Burtonwood) 2014; Dialogues on The New Plastic, Fire Cat, Chicago, IL, (with Tom Burtonwood) 2014; Multiplicity, Oak Park Public Library, IL (with Tom Burtonwood) 2011

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS: 2026, Botanical, Readiness GAG, Chicago IL; Sophomore Show, Columbia College Chicago, Faculty Show; 2025 Her Space, Heaven Gallery, Chicago IL (Sept - Nov.); Expo Chicago, Bert Green Gallery, Navy Pier, Chicago IL; Videokaffe, Galerie Herold, c/o Güterbahnhof Bremen, Bremen, GER; SHAT Summer Open, Curator: Ruth Heaton, SHAT Visual Arts Gallery, Skelmanthorpe, UK; 2024 VideoKaffe, Art House Turku, Finland; England is a Forest, curated Small Works Art Gallery at Sluice, Colchester, UK; 2023 VideoKaffe, Seemannsgarn. MOM, Art Space, Hamburg, Germany; Fuzz,, Purple Window Gallery, Chicago, IL; Art Community | Design Culture, Faculty Show, Columbia College, Chicago, IL; Meta Space Opening Exhibition, Online, Liverpool, England; VideoKaffe, MUU HELSINKI, Contemporary Art Centre, Helsinki, Finnland; 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Design Museum of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Small Works, McGing’s, Westport, Ireland; 2021 Rokko Meets the Art Festival, Kobe, Japan; Nomad, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; 2020 Rokko Meets the Art Festival, Kobe, Japan; Art in Place, Oak Park, Il; Videokaffe, Sign Gallery, Netherlands; Mail Art, Lawrence and Clark, Mail Art, Chicago, IL; Slowly with Care, Dominican University, River Forest, IL: Shades of Clay, Kunthius, Contemporary Art Gallery, Crayke, UK

Personal Statement

My artistic practice explores the interplay between abstraction and representation, focusing on how facts, interpretations, and personal translations of experiences shape my work. I aim to evoke a sense of wonderment in viewers, drawing inspiration from the natural world and our interactions with the built environment. My paintings and tufted rugs are characterized by recurring themes, similar forms, and intricate patterns of texture and color, creating a visual rhythm that resonates across my body of work.

My method is a pendulum that swings between two polar opposites. On one end of my spectrum I am working in the emotional landscape drawing, annotating, making images of my surroundings and how I’m feeling in that space, at that time. The images that this activity produces are abstract and emotions are sublimated under layers of color, and texture. At the other pole is a study of the world around me delving into the earth with tweezers, and sterile jars, to unearth treasures seen only through a microscope. This oscillation between an imaginative macro and an interpretative micro is a balance for me and allows me to explore my experiences and satisfy intellectual curiosity.

Portfolio

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

Ignite your child's artistic potential in a summer art camp that fosters skill development and creativity by exploring diverse materials in a stimulating environment. Students draw inspiration from the renowned Art Institute of Chicago, local architecture, public art, and current events as they develop skills across multiple mediums, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpting, and mixed media. Additionally, they enhance their critical thinking, time management, and problem-solving abilities in a fun, safe, and nurturing environment. Projects foster personal expression and collaborative skills while introducing students to contemporary and historical art. Each session has a unique focus, ensuring that students who enroll in multiple sessions will experience entirely new studio projects every time.

Class Number

1015

Credits

2

Description

Ignite your child's artistic potential in a summer art camp that fosters skill development and creativity by exploring diverse materials in a stimulating environment. Students draw inspiration from the renowned Art Institute of Chicago, local architecture, public art, and current events as they develop skills across multiple mediums, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpting, and mixed media. Additionally, they enhance their critical thinking, time management, and problem-solving abilities in a fun, safe, and nurturing environment. Projects foster personal expression and collaborative skills while introducing students to contemporary and historical art. Each session has a unique focus, ensuring that students who enroll in multiple sessions will experience entirely new studio projects every time.

Class Number

1017

Credits

2

Description

In this course we will focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary art and design practices of contemporary art production. This team-taught, year-long class explores the materials and techniques of surface, space, and time (2D, 3D, and 4D), as well as the connections and interplay of these areas. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, traditional with the contemporary, and makes visible a variety of approaches in current cultural production in order to foster the development of students? emerging practices as makers and thinkers.

In this interdisciplinary studio course students will be authorized to use a variety of school shops, materials and equipment; including the woodshop, plaster studio, digital lab, sewing machine, hand tools, sound and video production, digital workflows and principles of visual fundamentals. This is a hands-on making class, faculty present artists and content related to a particular toolkit and, or project theme. Every section of Core Studio has shared learning outcomes which are uniquely realized by each Core faculty partnership.

Students should expect a fast-paced studio environment. In Core Studio students will complete short assignments as well as longer multi-week projects. Assignments are designed to help students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials, processes, and themes presented by faculty.

Class Number

1229

Credits

3

Description

This studio course focuses on themes, practices, contexts, and questions undertaken by contemporary artists and designers. Research Studio I is a course that asks students to begin to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities. This course engages with cultural institutions including: museums, galleries, libraries and archives as resources of critical engagement.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.


Assignments in this course are faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary and idea based. The projects are designed to help students recognize their work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Students will experience a wide range of research methods and making strategies. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

Class Number

1402

Credits

3