HALEY HOLTSLANDER

BFA - PRINTMAKING

Haley Holtslander is a multidisciplinary artist that works primarily in printmaking and textiles. She uses her past experiences to create an environment that is uncomfortable and forces self reflection, while using the space to heal at the same time. She uses layering to create new meaning to both the material and subject matter. 

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Artist Statement:

In my piece titled Peregrination, I explore different life changing events that I have experienced. The word peregrination means a long meandering journey, not unlike the life of a chronically ill person. These events profoundly affected my life both negatively and positively, but, ultimately, I felt very alienated throughout them. These periods of intense loneliness I endured serve as a means to open up discussion on often stigmatized topics and motivates me to create work that allows others to feel less alone as they experience similar things. For myself, art has always been a way of connecting with other people, so making work surrounding something that affects me every day opens my world up to other people suffering the same way.

This body of work consists of three different parts: a large-scale screen print and two textile hoops.  The large screen print features an image of myself in a vulnerable position. The print itself is four layers that have been printed on separate sheets of clear mylar. Each layer correlates with a different colour and has been hand manipulated to induce a certain feeling. The yellow layer has been printed multiple times to create a fuzzy image to show the feeling of complete exhaustion, when the body feels like it’s sagging under the weight of tiredness. Magenta represents warmth and the painful, warm feeling one gets when sick. Hand marks covering the image allude to what the body may look like if internal pain showed itself like a bruise on the skin. The cyan layer is the embodiment of tear stained cheeks, with frustration and fatigue bubbling over until that feeling turns into tears. At the front of the piece is the Black layer where the face has been swiped over so the lines are muddled together visually representing the pounding headaches that seem to last for an eternity. 

To the right side of the screen print is a hoop with eight medications embroidered into dark red fabric. Like the title suggests, this is about a long journey which began with my first prescription. Along the way I have picked up more and these are what helps keep me healthy and alive; something beautiful and terrifying at the same time; to have the remedy but to even need it in the first place. The relationship between medication and the body is something that takes time to perfect and can be exhausting. I use embroidery as a vessel to show the labour that has gone into this relationship: the intricate details that took patience, pain from the pricked fingers and the waiting to see it all come together. 

On the left side of the screen print is a hoop identical to the other one except it does not have embroidery on it; instead it is blank except for a soft red glow lightly shining through. This piece is the warmth of every heating pad, hot water bottle and sock of rice, a comfort and a saviour to pain sufferers everywhere.

Creating this body of work was an incredible labour or love, similar to the labour of the life of someone with a chronic illness. In working with two labour intensive processes, I’ve recreated the bodily responses and functions of chronic illness while using my creative process to physically re-enact this labour on myself.  By reliving this labour on my own terms, I was able to see my illness from new perspectives and understand my body in a whole new way.