Website: christineAholtz.com ________________________________________ BIO: Christine A. Holtz received her M.F.A. in fiber arts from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and her B.F.A. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in painting and fiber arts. She has shown her artwork at many art institutions across the country including but not limited to the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York; Sheldon Art Galleries in St. Louis, Missouri; Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, Illinois; Palos Verdes Art Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, California; Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan; the Rockford Art Museum in Rockford, Illinois; and the George Caleb Bingham Gallery at the University of Missouri. Her work was chosen for the Fiberart International 2019 exhibition in Pittsburgh, PA and was featured in the summer of 2020 alongside Jessica Witte in “It Hits Home” at The Gallery at the Kranzberg, St. Louis, MO. Most recently, her work was selected for Surface Design Journal’s sixth annual international exhibition in print: From Confrontation to Catharsis. Ms. Holtz’s career as an educator started in 2008 when she became an Adjunct Instructor at Jefferson College teaching various art studio courses along with art history. From 2008 and continuing today, she serves as an Adjunct Instructor at St. Charles Community College. From 2010 to 2017 she also took on the role of Art Gallery Coordinator for the Fine Arts Gallery on the St. Charles Community College campus. In the fall of 2015, she was hired as an Associate Instructor to teach Fibers and Drawing at Maryville University where she continues to teach today. In her not-so-spare time, she is a mother, works at the YMCA part-time, competes on an artistic swim team, and tests her sanity through her tedious art practice._______________________________________________________ Artist Statement How we understand things depends so much on habit YET repetition and familiarity get in the way of ever really understanding anything. My artwork is a visual diary about my humorous take on habit, identity, and time. Juggling three part-time jobs in addition to being an artist, spouse, and mother feels like I am living six different lives simultaneously. I constantly try to make sense of the nonsensical through installations, sculptures, and performances. As a pathway to self-inquiry, I meticulously craft ridiculous objects and performances to visually embody the absurdities of my daily experience. As a parent, often all rationale seems lost, and my job is to try to find it−preferably while making it humorous at the same time. I try to make light of some of the overwhelming emotions associated with parenting. The process of making becomes a performance through sewn gesture drawings paired with repetitive hand embroidery. Both techniques used are deliberate metaphors. Hand embroidery requires a lot of control and repetition−very much like raising children. Likewise, in freehand machine embroidery, the machine wants to move in one direction while I encourage it to sew in a more desirable path. The processes are both a struggle and cathartic−just like working with children. Process plays a huge role in my art practice. I see methods of making as representation for repetitious actions. For example, Mumbleweed is composed of strips of hand-cut paper covered in hundreds of phrases I found myself saying over and over as a parent. Repeatedly saying the phrases on a daily basis wasn’t absurd enough, so I forced myself to sit and write them again and again as a performance in creating this piece. The sculpture is meant to quietly drift into the corner and go unnoticed just like the countless hours of my parenting words lost to the wind. My ongoing search for a cohesive identity shows through in my self-portrait work. In #therealme series I embroider over-filtered self-deprecating self-portraits to embody distorted identity posted through social media. The slow repetitive process of embroidery contradicts the immediacy of an Instagram selfie. Additionally, every three years since 2005, my Spare a Square for Unibrow Care project requires me to collect my plucked eyebrow hairs and “draw” a new self-portrait on a square of toilet paper with tweezers. The excessive repetition and extreme dedication taken to complete my visually overwhelming compilations tests the limitations of both my mind and body. Each of these projects is an attempt to gain understanding and control of the events of my life as they are unfolding before me.