Bio
Holly Barrett is an interdisciplinary artist using ceramics, illustration, and installation. She received her BFA from Ohio University with concentrations in Ceramics and Painting & Drawing. Holly has since completed a Post-Bacc via Western Michigan University, worked as Residency Liaison at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, and participated in residencies at Red Lodge Clay Center and Queen City Clay. She was named one of Ohio’s Emerging Artists 2023 by the Ohio Craft Museum and is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts at the Eskenazi School of Art & Architecture at Indiana University Bloomington.
Her work can be found at Adamah Gallery in Columbus, Ohio.
Statement
In my practice, I emphasize the continuous and non-linear nature of how people and stories develop over time and are perceived. As individuals, we are each the sum of many parts, illustrating our lives with traumas, travels, stories, and traditions. We have unlimited authority to edit, rewrite, and rearrange our priorities. Memoirs and biographic work create a space dedicated to moments that mean something to us– moments we choose to remember. And the language of storytelling, written or visual, epic or short, is a way of saying “Here, this is how I’m passing a part of me onto you.”
I integrate illustration with ceramics as a way to convey narrative. The question of how form and surface inform one another, and to what extent, is a source of joy and exploration in my work. I use thrown vessels, multi-part installations, and architectural adornment as canvases for layered imagery to emphasize themes of memory & story-telling, community, and perceived value.