Holly Ballard Martz
Past Perfect Future Tense
April 3 - May 17, 2025
Opening Reception: “First Thursday,” April 6=3, 6-8pm
Artist talk: “Saturday After”, April 5 at noon
The Gallery is pleased to present our first one-person exhibition by Seattle artist Holly Ballard Martz. The title for this exhibition, Past Perfect Future Tense, is a sly reference to society’s reverence of youth (one’s past is perfect) and its fraught relationship to growing old (one’s future is tense.) Incorporating a variety of materials, ranging from vintage quilts remnants to disposable injection needles to detachable bra straps, the artist creates sculpture that confronts assumptions about aging, particularly for women.
“This exhibition is a love letter to myself, and, in being so, is my attempt to reframe the insidious narrative around aging so that I may embrace the shifting topography of my body… Thinking about the loss of skin elasticity and the effects of gravity on that skin led me to explore the utility of bra straps and lead weights, combining them to create an embellished “skin” that is dimpled and sagging, tagged and discolored, but beautiful.”
This show is supported, in part, by a grant from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.
Work in exhibition
Vintage quilt fragment, glass seed beads, thread
12.75 x 28.75 inches
SOLD