Multi-media artist Holly Wilson creates figures as her storytellers, conveying stories of the sacred and the precious, capturing moments of our day, vulnerabilities, and strengths. The stories are, at one time, both representations of family history and personal experiences. Wilson’s work reaches a broad audience allowing the viewer to see their own personal connection.
She works in various media, including bronze, paint, encaustic, photography, and clay. These works have been exhibited since the early 1990s. Additionally, her works are in private, corporate, public, and museum collections nationally and internationally, such as the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, the C.N. Gorman Museum, The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School, and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.
Wilson has received recognition for her work through her inclusion in exhibitions, most recently, Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, Hear My Voice: Native American Art of the Past and Present, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia, these were both traveling exhibitions. Weaving History into Art: The Enduring Legacy of Shan Goshorn, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Four by Four 2016: Midwest Invitational, Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, Missouri, and Expressions of Spirit 1995, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. In 2018 Wilson’s solo exhibition On Turtle’s Back opened at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Santa Fe, NM, then traveled in 2019 to Dunedin Fine Art Center, Dunedin, FL. Wilson has received awards, grants, and fellowships for her work, including a 2017 SWAIA Discovery Fellowship from the Santa Fe Indian Market and a 2015 Eiteljorg Fellowship from the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. She recently completed a residency at The Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Bentonville, Arkansas working on large-scale paintings. In fall 2023, she will do a residency focusing on glass casting and large-scale bronze and aluminum casting at IAIA in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Holly Wilson an enrolled member of the Delaware Nation, Lenape and Descendent of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, is now based in Mustang, Oklahoma. In 2001, she graduated with an MFA in sculpture; in 1994, she earned an MA in ceramics from Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas; she received a BFA in ceramics at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1992.
