Holly Ballard Martz with “constellation of transgressions (thoughts and prayers)” 2019, Encaustic and spent bullet primers on panel, 36 x 48 inches each in “Deadlocked and Loaded: Disarming America”.
Martz creates incredibly powerful series of works across many media addressing many important subjects from the human condition, memory, regrets and mental health, to taking on women’s rights, domestic abuse, gun violence and the US political system/democracy. Her work is extraordinary and one could spend days studying it all, the works are deeply thought out and beautifully executed. With “constellation of transgressions (thoughts and prayers)”, I am mesmerized by the beauty and complexity of the works, the time and effort that went into placing all the spent bullets and the prayers murmured as a mantra for change as she worked on the piece.
Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. This is all we hear from lawmakers in response to tragedy after tragedy in relation to gun violence. But then nothing ever happens to put any plan in place to prevent it happening again. Are gun violence issues just too complex, so we just do nothing? Everybody’s talking and no one says a word, to quote John Lennon. Perhaps if enough of us put thoughts and prayers into the collective unconscious, such as Holly by creating these works, it will help people to embrace that enough is enough and put effective policies in place to end the senseless tragedies.
Holly says “The constellation of transgressions series is a memorialization of the extraordinary number of lives lost to gun violence in the United States. We talk about things being “written in the stars” as a way to describe the inevitable, but the astounding proliferation of firearms and the resulting deaths need not be our fate. Rather than enact meaningful legislation to reduce the number of lives ended by guns, our elected officials repeatedly offer their thoughts and prayers. In response to their inaction, I painstakingly embedded approximately 14,000 spent bullet primers into wax, offering up my own prayer for change.”
Holly Ballard Martz is a multidisciplinary artist who uses language and found objects to create iconic works about deeply felt social, political, and personal subjects. She has exhibited extensively, including a solo show at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art and an eighteen-month-long run of her monumental installation, danger of nostalgia in wallpaper form, at the Bellevue Arts Museum. The Greatest Show on Earth, her 30-foot circus tent constructed from 50 US flags, was featured on a billboard in NYC as part of The Ministry of Truth 1984/2020 in the month leading up to the 2020 Presidential election. She is the recipient of a McMillen Foundation Fellowship and an Artist Trust GAP award. Her work is held in many private and public collections, including the Gates Foundation for which she was commissioned to create work in celebration of their 20th Anniversary. Based in Seattle, Martz received her BFA from the University of Washington.
Learn and see more at http://www.hollyballardmartz.com and @hballardmartz
