Priscilla Hollingsworth
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New Commission

3/6/2022

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This is a newly completed commission made through Robert Passal Interior and Architectural Design in New York City.  It's a pair of clay sculptures that can be used as stools or as small tables.  Each one is a little over 19 inches high, and about 12 inches in diameter.  The pieces are going to Houston.

The clay is a rugged white body meant for sculpture and architecture.  The glaze is smooth, white, and has only a bit of sheen.
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The above photo gives a sense of how I built these pieces.  It was necessary to build both at once so they would match closely.  The basic construction method is a combination of coil/slab.  It would seem logical to build the entire forms first and then add the basketwork surface texture, but the clay in the lower walls would have been too firm and dry for good attachment by that point.  So, the surface treatment has to be added while the form is being built.  It's a constant balancing act.
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Altered Book 7 in process: in the time of coronavirus isolation

4/19/2020

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This is a new altered book I'm making.  I've glued all of the pages and painted a background on them.  Now I've started on the first page spread with collaged elements.  This page is probably complete except for a label identifying the book.

A running background theme in this book is Covid-19, the coronavirus that is wrecking human interaction - and life itself - around the world.  I have downloaded some of the coronavirus graphics we're all familiar with by now - I've altered them and printed them on vellum (a translucent paper), and I'm cutting out portions of the images to collage into the book.  On this first page spread, you can see a virus on the right hand page near the center fold, either floating or possibly attaching itself to the image below it.  Is it just another virus hanging out somewhere, hopefully not doing much, or is it attacking some kind of human organ system?  I think you know the answer already, having lived this far.
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A new altered book:  No. 6

6/26/2018

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I've just finished an altered book.  This one started as a British book about important events in the 20th century, published in the 1970s.  Only a little of the book's content survives now, though.  I chose the book in a thrift shop in Santa Fe (NM) because I liked the quality of the paper, and it has a sewn binding.  It's a nice big book - about 12 inches tall when closed.

I had a couple of compositional themes with this book.  First, there are large, mostly original drawings that often float off the left or right edge of a page spread.  Second, I used portions of printmaking plates, cut up and glued in as collage elements.  The plates are from monotypes, and I worked them on vellum.  The original printing medium was water based.  I liked how the translucency of the vellum allowed the plate portions to nestle down into the matrix of the gouache mixtures I had already applied to the paper.

The imagery is - various.  Plants and animals, sometimes in microscopic views, my clay vessels and sculpture, landscape photos - and a few other things.  Snakes are notable - I used my stash of photos of snakes from a teapot project I did several years ago for the Year of the Snake.  As usual in my two-dimensional work, objects are presented in kind of a primordial soup of contexts.  
Priscilla Hollingsworth, Altered Book 6
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Swamp Drawing:  Cypress Roots

9/19/2017

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I love the way the base of a bald cypress tree will widen out when it grows in a very damp area.  This one is standing in Butler Creek at the Phinizy Swamp.  The drawing is mostly about my enjoyment of the dark and light interlocking patterns of the cypress tree base and the lush growth around it.
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The water is tea-colored because of the presence of tannin compounds from decomposing plants - it's not pollution.  
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Swamp Drawing: Forest Floor with Dots

8/27/2017

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​I was looking at a bright green plant with large leaves that was growing directly out of the forest floor near the Butler Creek trail.  The light was beautiful, and the leaves were especially 3-dimensional.  I added dots to the background - it's part of of my interest in patterns and the idea of a network that everything in nature is part of.
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Swamp Drawing:  Bald Cypress Cones

8/22/2017

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These fascinating green balls are the cones of the bald cypress tree.  The surface structure is very subtle - I had to do a lot of image enhancement to even get it to show in this photo.

​In the background of the drawing I added a pattern used in lacemaking.
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Tree Installation

8/21/2017

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These are photos of the temporary, small installation that I designed for a family camping event at the Phinizy Swamp.  Several kids and a mom helped me.  We selected a tree just off the boardwalk at the Raingarden trail, we spread swamp clay around the base of the tree, then we gathered and placed 2 kinds of leaves around the tree.  At the end we put in a circle of unripe blackberries.  The whole thing should biodegrade quickly on its own.
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Swamp Drawings:

8/18/2017

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​I was looking at a lovely wildflower (weed?) out at the swamp, and was amazed by its delicate structure.

I used some color in this drawing to try to show the structure of the flower.
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Swamp Drawings:  Puffball Mushroom

8/16/2017

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I've started a new drawing project with the Phinizy Center for Water Sciences - the Phinizy Swamp Nature Park.  It's pretty simple:  I take a walk out there, notice something, draw it.  Then the Phinizy Center posts the drawing and a photo on their Facebook page.  These entries have been appearing for a couple of months now.  I thought I would also show them here.
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I saw a puffball mushroom on the entrance to the Butler Creek Trail.  At first glance it looked like a round white puff with a slightly cracked surface.  Looking closer, I saw that the surface was covered with what looked like little mountains with beaked peaks.

​This is the drawing that I made:
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Year of the Rooster Teapots

1/14/2017

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2017 is the year of the Rooster.  The element is Fire, so this year's rooster is extra-feisty, and is best cooled down with a bit of Earth.  These small porcelain teapots are made entirely by hand, individually.  I had fun with suggesting the Rooster through a lid that looks a bit like a rooster's comb, plus some feather painting on the body of the teapot.  The earth element comes in through the use of a soft yellow-brown base glaze.  The teapots are 4 inches or less in height.
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    Author

    Priscilla Hollingsworth, artist.

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Carl Purdy Music
    Cats
    Ceramics
    Ceramic Sculpture
    Clay Musical Instruments
    Collage
    Drawing
    Dyeing
    Exhibitions
    Flowers
    Folk Art Market
    Game Pieces
    Hand Spinning
    Howard Romero
    Hums & Oms
    Installation Art
    Lightning
    Master Naturalist
    Music And Art
    New Mexico
    Ojo Caliente
    Painting
    Performing Sculpture
    Phinizy Swamp
    Phinizy Swamp
    Porcelain
    Process
    Rainbows
    Rob Foster Music
    Santa Fe
    Sarah Fletcher Photos
    Sculpture
    Sketchbooks
    Snow
    Southern Observatory
    Spring
    Sunset
    Teapots
    Vermont Studio Center
    Water
    Westobou Festival

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