Abby Holmes is an artist, wife and mother and creates art influenced by these parts of her identity. As SJMQT's Spring Artist In Residence, she participated in the Artist Spotlight Interview Series. Read more about her work and see art created during her residency!

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What has surprised you about your art practice since the Shelter in Place order?

With all the time to reflect that Shelter in Place afforded me, I realized that art is my true calling. I have created art since childhood. I was lucky to have a fabulous art teacher, Joe Bonifas, in middle and high school. I held jobs related to the field of art after finishing college until just before the pandemic. In the meantime, I had continuously created art, but it was not until the pandemic started that I decided to really make a go of it. Two quotes which I stumbled upon near the beginning of the Shelter in Place order greatly influence and guide my current artistic practice. Michelle Obama, in her autobiography Becoming, said there is power “in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice.” The 13th century Persian poet Rumi said “Let the beauty you love be what you do”

What are the largest obstacles you need to overcome (immediately, near future, distant future)?

To make the art, or rather, to become disciplined enough to sit down each day and make art is my biggest obstacle to overcome immediately. Whether it’s one hour or eight hours per day, I am striving to set up a daily studio practice.

My biggest obstacle to overcome in the near future is to determine how to care for my son this summer and still manage to make art. I can’t take my son to my studio, so I will have to carve out some way to make time for my studio practice.

My biggest obstacle to overcome in the distant future is to either get an MFA or get over the fact that I don’t have one. Stop me if you have heard this one before: when I had the time and the energy, I didn’t have the money. Now I have the energy and money, but don’t have the time. I’m afraid when I have the time and money, I won’t have the energy. I just finished reading Old in Art School by Nell Painter. I did not envy the particularities of her journey which found her going back to school to obtain a BFA and MFA in her sixties. While the idea theoretically sounds appealing, I don’t think higher education is tailored for people who are older than their 20s or 30s. Hopefully things will change for the better. On the other hand, my mom informed me two years ago that my grandmother was 47 when she earned her Master’s degree in Education. Knowing this fact is all the inspiration I need.

What do you do when you get "stuck" in your creative process? Where do you turn for inspiration?

When I get stuck in my creative process, I usually give myself time: time to breathe, and time to step back and think. Or I take the time to take an art class to learn a new skill. Or I read about a woman artist who is new to me. If I get really stuck, I usually make a simple craft and voila, I remember how much joy creating gives me.

What are you currently reading/ listening to?

Before I bought the book Great Women Artists (edited by Phaidon) for myself for Christmas this year, I wondered if I really needed it. Two summers ago, I had completed the wonderful class Women in Art History at West Valley college taught by Dr. Cynthia Napoli-Abella Reiss. But I only recognized the names of 80 of the 400 artists listed in the table of contents of Great Women Artists. There exists a whole world of women artists to learn about. As an aside, you can purchase the book from the online shop of the Museum of Craft and Design.

What drew you to the fiber art medium over others?

I was born, bred and educated in Ohio. Every summer we would religiously attend the county fair. I remember being enamored by the quilts on display each year. Math and Art were my favorite subjects in school. I took a bit of a detour in college, majoring in Women’s Studies, Humanities and Journalism and minoring in English. I mistakenly thought art was not a serious career choice thus I had not picked a university which offered a Fiber Art major. It wasn’t until I was 23 that I visited the Riffe Gallery in Columbus, Ohio and saw a sampling of pieces on exhibit from Quilt National 1999. When I saw Susan Shie’s quilt The Teapot/High Priestess (Card #2 of the Kitchen Tarot), I had the epiphany that I wanted to become a fiber artist.

*SJMQT Digital AIR Community Collage in-process– various papers and thread.*

As SJMQT learned to quickly pivot this year and transition to digital platforms, so too has our Artist In Residence program! For the first time ever, SJMQT adjusted its residency and invited artist Christine Meuris to become its first ever Digital AIR. Have you been following along? Learn a little more about her, her process, and thoughts on how the residency is going, below!

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What are materials and processes utilized in your body of work?

I work almost exclusively with paper, using it to create work that draws on fiber art traditions, such as needle point, quilting, sewing and weaving. I sew all different kinds of paper although now I mostly work with kozo paper which is a Japanese paper made from mulberry bark. It is strong, thin and translucent and when I sew it, I mount it on book binding cloth which is similar to tarlatan. This gives my pieces added structure and reinforces sewn seams in the work.

Right now is a busy time in my studio because I am working on a project as the SJMQT digital Artist in Residence making a sewn paper collage with words and paper that I have collected from the SJMQT community and other friends and colleagues. I am also making another group of drawings based on needle point designs and working out ideas for another direction to pursue in 2021.

*Working on bargello needle point drawings – sumi ink on tea stained Rives BFK.*

Describe the main differences of your old studio to your Shelter in Place studio.

The physical place is the same, but its role in my life has changed. It has become a lifeline. I rent a studio a couple of miles from my house in Berkeley, CA. Fortunately it has its own entrance and is well ventilated, so I have been able to continue working there. As everyone else in my family has had to return home to work, including a college student and a high school senior, the only place I can focus and find solitude is my studio. I am lucky to have it.

What do you do when you get stuck in your creative process? Where do you turn for inspiration?

When I get stuck I like to look at monographs or watch documentaries or read articles about other artists. I especially love to connect with the lives of artists who are self-taught or work in folk-art traditions. And when I read about artists who make their art from what they find, regardless of recognition, just to do it, it reminds me that my practice is not really about what I make, but how I get to spend my days. When I am stuck, it is often an outlook thing – an attack of self-doubt – and when I remind myself that I am in good company with other artists and that the artistic/creative life is a brave and dignified one, then I’m usually good – and then I just start playing again until something catches.

What are you currently reading/ listening to?

I am currently reading Women’s Work the First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. It is subtitled Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times and it is blowing my mind! I am learning so much about early weaving and fiber technology and early human settlement. As a result, I have been sucked down a rabbit hole of backstrap weaving videos and am almost ready to try it myself! But the idea in the book Women’s Work that is so fascinating to me is that fiber was developed in earnest in the Neolithic era when agricultural practices and permanent settlements began. Barber describes this as the beginning of the “greatest pyramid scheme of all time” – meaning that it began a chain of acquisition. I have only to think of how simple and easy computers make my life, and yet how I feel like there are not enough hours in the day to get everything they make possible done, to know what she is talking about. She suggests that we are now at the top of the pyramid “stuck with the bill for some five hundred generations of uncontrolled acquisition…begun in the Neolithic.” That is some deep truth.

What drew you to the fiber art medium over others?

Working out ideas for project to pursue in 2021 – kozo, bookbinding cloth, acrylic ink and thread. — *Working out ideas for project to pursue in 2021 – kozo, bookbinding cloth, acrylic ink and thread*.

I think that quite simply, it was my mother. Both of my parents were “bohemian-adjacent” types. My father sculpted throughout my childhood and designed his own car bodies which led to us always having a yard car that he was working on. But it was my mother’s sewing that really stuck with me. Her fabric drawer always held such possibility even before I knew how to sew. And then when I did learn to sew, the idea that creativity and making could lead to something useful really drew me in. There was constant inspiration that way. How I then ended up sewing things that are totally impractical in order to explore my love of fiber and textile traditions is a long story, but I made it!

What artist, who works in a different medium, informs your practice?

This is going to sound crazy, but I think right now, comedians/performers are the most inspiring artists for me. I crave laughter, I crave hard truths and I love when artists/performers risk their dignity and sometimes completely abandon it to give me those things! The second Borat movie has given me such release during this pandemic as has the movie What We Do in the Shadows. I love Maria Bamford, Tig Notaro, Ali Wong, Dave Chapelle, Fortune Feimster… the list goes on.

What non-art related activity do you do to invigorate your body/mind?

I like going on long hikes and am trying to hike the entire Bay Area Ridge Trail. I am about one third done at this point. I also took up swimming in the bay this year. One especially great swim I had was after I taught the sewn collage workshop for SJMQT. I had been so nervous about teaching it because I had never taught a workshop on-line before and when it was done, I just hopped in the Bay at the Berkeley Marina and swam out to where I could see Mt Tamalpais and San Francisco and watched pelicans dive.

What are you looking forward to doing again once Shelter in Place is over?

Once Shelter in Place is over, I look forward to hugging people and going to live theater!

Specific thoughts on being the SJMQT Digital AIR:

Being the SJMQT Digital Artist in Residence has been so good for me. It has pushed me to develop skills and experiment with teaching, documenting and filming in a way that I might not have done otherwise. As a result, I have developed a syllabus for a workshop, am able to make a janky video, and am able to articulate ideas about my work more deeply and in more ways than ever before. By having to appear in front of the camera and figure out ways to share what I am doing, I have incorporated performance into my work which is something I am also interested in. In addition, I pushed myself to include community in my work which is new for me. The process of collecting thoughts and ideas from the SJMQT community and beyond, to sew into a community collage, has been so dynamic and unpredictable and freeing (more about that in another video!) and I am grateful to everyone who participated!

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“Below are 4 photos of work I completed during the first Shelter in Place order in the spring of 2020. They are based on the rhythms of words on a page from some of my favorite books and one book I imagined.”