I like using organic material, wood. I like using found material. I use teeth in my sculptures. I use pennies. But mostly, I think, I believe in a sense of things being passed on. I like things to be touched, and so a lot of my things are found objects. I would take pennies that I collect from friends or acquaintances or that are found, and I would make a complete sculpture with that. I would do other pieces that have to do with the same thing. I would take soap out of bathrooms or people’s home and collect that and make a mold. I believe that has something to do with things being passed on and most of the work seems to have some kind of a running narrative.
The narrative sense about it is in terms of something that took place or is about to take place. Most of the stuff, the philosophy behind it, I believe is really from something that I feel inertly not from “art school” but from family and, I believe, a strong sense of family and memory and history from family. A lot of my work has to do with my grandmother’s stories that have been passed on, stories from church, historical stories, misinformation from stories. I like the work to be proponents that will outlive me -- that has a sense of being a kind of collective history of man and mankind, but definitely something that’s very positive and that’s very much bigger than I am and that has to do with being creative.
Fred Holland. Sculptor, choreographer. New York City, New York, U.S.A. Mr. Holland has been awarded fellowships from NEA in choreography and from the New York Foundation of the Arts and Creative Capital Award for the visual arts. His exhibitions include Gallery X, The Drawing Center, & New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC, and Cite’ Internationale des Arts, Paris.
