Artist Profile: Holly Kellogg

This is the first in what I intend to become a series of artist profiles.

Artist Holly Kellogg is a recent transplant to Spencer, Iowa. Though she has a degree in Painting, she has in her recent years explored the mixed-media genre of assemblage, creating art out of found objects (esp. things found in the road while running) and discarded blue jeans (waste-not-want-not), while also incorporating paint. Pattern and geometric shapes also characterize these works. At the same time, she shows her more traditional side through her colored pencil still life drawings and the occasional still life painting. She's been known to dabble in clay.


Things Found While Running


River Rocks in a Bowl

An Oklahoma native, she graduated from Ames High, started out at Cornell College, and ultimately received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. Art has always been a fixture of Holly's life. She is the daughter of two artists (father a retired ISU professor of architecture and painter/sculptor, mother a painter/ceramist/paper sculptor), and grand daughter of an artist/architect. It was during her time as a student at Ames High that she decided that art was important to her (the art program there is on par with many colleges).

Her formal training was in painting. She says, "I enjoyed that [painting from life], but in time felt a desire to work more conceptually. I began dismantling used blue jeans to create a canvas and exploring the use of various materials and ways of applying paint in my work. A reoccurring theme that has developed from these explorations consists of a layering of form or materials, with part of the image being hidden, which suggests to me that our understanding and view of life, ourselves, one-another is partial. That there is more to be seen or discovered. Exploration is key for me."

She is currently working on building a body of work that began with a mop: "I had some cotton cord that came from a mop head (unused). I had the idea of laying the cord on a jean canvas painted red. I lay the cord in curving lines that resemble the lines on a geological map. It took many hours to sew the thread on. I liked what was happening, but wanted to do some work more quickly." The current work (as shown in examples here) sprung from this--2-D paintings using the line of the mop cords. "I began laying the cord down to created shape, drawing along those lines and painting from there. When working, I seek to bring in elements of composition to the work. I hope to created depth through the layering of shape and through color. I play around with various combinations and keep trying things."


Amoeba


Riverwalk

She currently works in a studio in her home. Her work is available at Arts on Grand here in Spencer, at the Octagon in Ames, and by appointment.


The artist in her studio.

One of my personal favorite pieces entitled Are You Awake is an example of Holly's work that uses layers of plexiglass in a shadowbox, spraypaint and stencils, and a photograph of her eldest daughter.: