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Artists' Studio Visits at Biddington's Art Gallery



DIANE HOLLAND
Intermedia Collage Printmaker

Diane Holland in Peter Frank curated exhibition: "Black Box"
another year in LA
February 7-March 25, 2005
2121 N. San Fernando Road, Los Angeles, CA
Diane Holland print Palimpsestic Metanoia 3 Diane Holland work on paper PalMet 1



CREATIVE PROCESS visits the California studio of artist
Diane Holland.


Palimpsestic
Metanoia 3
Ilfachrome print
(left)
22" X 17"
2000

Palimpsestic
Metanoia 1
Ilfachrome print
22' X 17"
1998
(right)







Editor's Note: Whether in interpreting the impact of the new technology or simply in availing themselves of new tools, artists often mirror the innovations of their time. In this conversation, Diane Holland who describes herself as an "intermedia artist" talks about the influence of media on the culture and the use of new technology in her electrotransfer collage prints. This studio visit is one a series of interviews with artists who address technological issues or use technology in creating their work. We at Biddington's believe that this art--especially works showing the early influence of computers on the culture at large--is an important marker in art history.

Diane Holland: We live in a technologically oriented society. Less and less importance is given to our creative and spiritual development. Mechanistic, ritualistic forms of behavior have replaced feeling and emotions. Our society imposes these models of behavior through mass-media images-- a process I call cultural imprinting.

Diane Holland electrotransfer

Diane Holland: American culture has become a widespread worldwide phenomenon. American movies influence Polish anti-Communists, Brazilian slum dwellers and Serbian terrorists. Traffic comes to a halt in Helsinki when the American daytime drama "The Bold & the Beautiful" (which plays in almost 100 countries) comes on Finnish TV. Nowadays, to work in Hollywood or for an American ad agency is to influence the world.


Diane Holland
Somatic Telesthesia K
Electrotransfer on paper, 1992



Diane Holland: My artwork speaks to my own life experience, examining how cultural imprinting affects me. I hope to serve as a catalyst, signaling creative interplay between myself and others--participating in life at a place where cultural imprints and assumptions cannot exist.



Diane Holland: I use electrotransfer (that is, color Xerography) and Cibachrome photography to interpret and convey the relationship that develops between human beings and the technological artifacts they create.


Diane Holland bunny detail of Marbu print


Diane Holland: The three series of images--Somatic Telesthesia, Palimpsestic Metanoia and Marbu produced with electronic means, focus on the kinds of technological interactions that impact upon an individual on both a personal and a cultural level.


Detail from Marbu 813
15" X 22", 1998
Ilfachrome print of computer-assisted electrotransfer



Diane Holland: My source material is real and imagined experience. The first of these series, Somatic Telesthesia, is an examination of how the things that affect a child create the adult that child becomes. As we lose innocence growing up, we gain character.


Diane Holland: My early art training was at Immaculate Heart College--a non-sectarian, very liberal, school that happened to be run by nuns. The best known of those was the artist Sister Mary Corita. The school featured one-on-one training between mentor and student, took an eclectic approach to studio instruction, and provided students like me with a lot of latitude and a lot of possibilities. It was a wonderful chance to expand in intimate environment, sort of an urban Black Mountain School. Immaculate Heart no longer exists as a college -- I was in its last graduating class - but the nuns still have a high school with that name. The campus itself in Los Feliz is now the home of the American Film Institute, so the spirit lives on.




Diane Holland: I'm especially interested in the spiritually and psychologically motivated artists of the early 20th century, artists such as Klee, Kandinsky, Malevich, and the surrealists. Also, great collagists such as Schwitters interest me. I want as diverse a visual experience as possible.



Diane Holland artists' book image

Diane Holland: I enjoy the artistic process of discovering new people and experiences, through my eyes or otherwise. For many years I have also worked as a performance artist and actress. My performances have taken me to a deeper place emotionally and spiritually, and they have also brought in the five senses more viscerally, more intensely. My acting training and experience have showed me how to create character, and how to clarify structure and form. Although my work is not overtly narrative, the creation of character is very important to it. I feel that every shape and image in my art should react meaningfully with every other. We can't help but look at the most neutral shapes and create a story, the way kids look up at the sky and identify faces and animals in the clouds, so I feel I should give order to the story, or at least the "story-ness" of my art.

Diane Holland: Amari Marbu is a collaborative work created with Peter Frank. For several years Peter and I have been making artworks based in new technologies. This latest collaboration, a book, pays homage to that venerable icon of information technology.
Editors note: Peter Frank is art critic for LA Weekly , editor and publisher of Visions art quarterly and a well-known curator of contemporary art exhibitions.

View all of AMARI MARBU the artists' book by Diane Holland and Peter Frank. This is a large slide presentation and will take about 90 seconds to download.



Page from Amari Marbu (left)






Diane Holland image





Diane Holland: In Amari Marbu, I created the images, and Peter created the words. The sense of play that characterizes our relationship also quite deliberately characterizes our collaborations.





Page from Amari Marbu (right)





Diane Holland: Aesthetically, the introduction of words into my Marbu and Palimpsestic Metanoia pictures wasn't anything new; I'd collaged whole texts into my Somatic Telesthesia pieces. But the words this time were "scored" to the images. Peter wrote them in response to the images, and of course it was important to integrate them into the pictorial compositions.








Diane Holland and Peter Frank





Diane Holland: The chance to work with Peter also prompted me to move into computer enhancement for the first time. When we transferred my color photocopy images to a disk, so that Peter could write into them on-screen, I took the opportunity to modify the existing images. My modifications tend to be subtle, but they are numerous. The computer is now as important a tool for me as is the color photocopier.



Diane Holland & Peter Frank




Diane Holland: Whatever the tools, or whether I am working solo or in a collaborative effort, I am always seeking to provide the viewer with a powerful, complex visual experience. I am exploring how we create, broaden and experience ourselves as human beings and thereby affect wider social change.







View Diane Holland prints and the book Amari Marbu by Holland/Frank
for sale in BIDDINGTON'S Digital & New Media Gallery
Prices: $800 and $150

Diane Holland recent selected exhibition history:

2004 "In America Now" Don O'Melveny Gallery, West Hollywood, CA
1999 Venice Art Walk, Venice, CA (also 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995)
1998 "Best of the West", Zero-One Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1998 MOCA Art Auction, Santa Monica, CA (also 1992)
1998 "Livres d'Artiste" & "Estampes Numeriques", Galerie Toner, Sens, FRANCE
1997 ARTernatives 97, San Luis Obispo, CA
1997 Watts Tower Art Center, Los Angeles, CA
1996 Juried Exhibition, San Diego Art Institute, CA
1995 "Information Superhighway", Downey Museum, CA
1994 "Barbie & Beyond", Morphos Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1994 "Interfaces: Dialogues in Art and Technology", Digital Domain, Venice, CA
1994 "Making Art with the Laser Printer", Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA
1993 Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (also 1995, 1992)
1992 "Space & Image in Contemporary Collage", Long Beach City College, CA
1991 "Reflections of Women Photographers", City Hall Bridge Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1989 "Evolving Abstractions in Photography", Carlson Gallery, Bridgeport, CT

ABOUT THIS FEATURE

CREATIVE PROCESS at Biddington's is designed as a forum for watching art in the making. Usually, this process happens in the privacy of the artist's studio. At BIDDINGTON'S--Contemporary Art Gallery & upmarket, online art & antiques auctions--we find it interesting to witness the steps leading to the end product and to hear the artists speak about their work in the relaxed surroundings of their own studios.



Email Biddington's with your comments.



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Diane Holland Intermedia Collage Artist
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