Holly Wilson

"My figures serve as storytellers, stories of the sacred and the precious, capturing moments of our day, our vulnerabilities, and our strengths. They are the quiet echoes of life's delicate balance, telling a story of the fragility in both life and their own form; how far one can reach, which step may be too many.

"As a Delaware/Cherokee Native American, I grew up hearing many stories from my mother. I was drawn to those of shape shifters with the idea of a trickster who wears a mask to hide their identity, birds as messengers, and owls as bearers of tragic news. These stories also now run through most of my work in the form of animals with human characteristics, masks of birds and other animals.

"Some of the birds I cast in sterling silver as a reference to things that are burdens, or "birdens". While things, situations, and/or people may be a burden at times, they are important and precious and for this reason the birds are cast in sterling silver.

"The masks some of the figures wear are layered with meaning from creatures in nature to a child's imagined world. As children, we make and wear masks to be anything we want or need to be and we could do anything in them from being a super hero to a bird in flight. As adults, the layers and meaning deepen and grow and these masks are a way to represent the different personas that we need or desire to be in life."

-- Holly Wilson