Spotlight: Holly Cole, Fiber Artist

Follow along with Holly Cole as she creates hand drawn and painted whole cloth quilts that often focus on the intersection of animal-human relationships and issues. She applies her breadth of experience and knowledge to bring her work to life with cloth and stitch.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?

Theater design was my route into becoming an artist.

I got the theater bug to act in junior high but at Northwestern University my interest evolved into set and costume design, and tech where I began to learn to draw, paint, and make stuff.

Theater provides crazy non-stop challenges in a huge range of styles so as I dug into becoming a designer. I also learned how to sew, drape, pattern, draft, sculpt, scene paint, fabric print, dye, and confect things with a wide variety of materials and techniques.

Most importantly theater design also taught me to use art to support stories, themes, and moods and to create lively characters.

How has your creativity evolved over the years? What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?

When I left grad school I had a long career as both a professor and a theater costume designer, crafts artisan, and technologist. Working for Broadway, the Muppets, Ringling Bros. Circus, and a slew of regional theaters as well as the universities I taught at, honed my skills as an artisan and designer. When I retired in 2016 I started looking for new outlets for the art and storytelling I loved.

I first dug into surface design and took a slew of classes on fabric dyeing and printing to expand my skills. Then I started using these skills to explore art quilting. I discovered that free motion quilting was like drawing with a sewing machine! And that triggered exploring more drawing and painting on quilts.

Do you have a dedicated space for creating? If so, what does it look like? How do you make time for creating?

I am blessed to have a studio and kitchenette above my garage where I can play.

Print tables that can easily be reconfigured, silkscreens and paint supplies, a dye set up, a sit down long arm, my trusty old Bernina, and my printers and computer allow me a variety of approaches to take.

Because I have the luxury of retirement I am usually in the studio daily from around 7 until around 3 and generally work on one project intensely at a time, with occasional projects that hang out on the design walls waiting for the next creative burst.  

How have other people supported or inspired you?

I’ve been blessed with some fabulous quilting mentors (Paula Kovarik and Linda Colsh) who pushed me to explore more storytelling and character creation in my work and to compete in calls for entry for both quilt and art competitions. These mentors were essential to helping me find my “voice” as a fiber artist.

What is your signature that makes your work stand out as yours? Where do you find inspiration for your designs?

My style of art quilting has evolved into hand drawn and painted whole cloth quilts that usually focus on animal-human relationships and issues.

It is endless fun for me to explore the sentient side of animals and my theater storytelling genes have channeled into trying to evoke work that supports animal causes. My design goal is for the audience to better understand and connect with these creatures.

Sometimes my work is a celebration of foolish and endearing creatures; sometimes it is a study in the strength and endurance these creatures need. At all times I hope my work conveys layered meanings. 

Do you do series work? Do you plan your work out ahead of time or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing? 

I have three series I’ve explored over the last 3 years: Dog Gestalt, Vanishing Creatures, and Veterans.

For each series I start with an idea or metaphor I want to explore. Then I dig into looking for poses that have emotional resonance and do detailed anatomy studies. I am by nature a planner so as I develop drawings I will play with scale and arrangements in Photoshop or on my design walls. The painting and quilting part of the process is where improvisation comes into play. 

Does your work have stories to tell? 

The Dog Gestalt quilts are an exploration of the sentient side of dogs and a celebration of their range of moods and actions. It has both individual portraits and group compositions but I have always thought of this series as ideally an installation so that the room is filled with dogs in a wide variety of moods. 

Vanishing Creatures looks at vanishing or endangered animals and the forces that threaten them.

I’ve explored a variety of styles to express their fragility and sometimes fabric choice becomes the key inspiration for a route to a metaphor for the composition; for example Northern White Rhino is rendered on translucent organdy to emphasize the fragility of this critically endangered animal and is intended to be backlit.

Most recently this series evolved from individual portraits to a full installation of gauze panels which take the viewer through a jungle of playful baby orangutans as they and the jungle starts to disappear.

Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does new work come about? 

The Veterans series grew out of a torn and damaged tarp I was given that seemed to perfectly express both the toughness and endurance these animals must have. The series combines up-cycled damaged army and work surplus fabrics with hand quilting and boro-style mending with gauze patches.

Starting as a series of quilts the work has now evolved into 3-D fiber sculptures of some of the animals as opportunities for solo shows and invitational exhibitions developed.

The 3-D creatures are developed using a method I learned at the Muppet studios: I drape and flat pattern flexible sheet foams of different densities to create the base and then cover it with the up-cycled fabrics and finally add paint touches to heighten the plane changes. 

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you? 

My favorite part of the process? Probably both researching the poses (which sparks ideas) and the drawing.

The most difficult part? Trying to get the style of the quilting to add an additional layer of meaning to the imagery on the quilt.