Holly Grace, Walking Light, a self portrait
Holly Grace wonders through the Australian bush that inspires her enchanting glass works.
As I walk along a well-worn track carved by heavy machinery with 4WD tread marks, I know where it leads and how far and long my journey will be. I am safe and secure in a place that is foreign to me but one that I am hoping to get to know.
As the journey continues I see that my track has many small interceptions, lightly marked animal trails formed by swamp wallabies, wombats and eastern grey kangaroos. Nature’s pathways lead into a vast open landscape, both empty and full. Empty of life’s everyday distractions but full of space to breathe and the sublime wonders of our unique light-filled landscape.
With trepidation and joy, I step off the track and into the unknown, with a lighter step I ascend a trail crafted by nature on a journey of discovery both ancient and new.
My artwork begins in nature, a traverse into the remote regions of the Australian outback. This time I am alone within the landscape is an invaluable experience, sometimes challenging but immensely inspirational as I learn more about the natural world and about myself.
My experiences are documented initially with the camera but further explored with glass as my canvas, becoming both a lens and a personal record of our unique environment.
This is an intimate record created from a recent four-week Craft ACT 2023 artist residency at the National Portrait Gallery and Gudgenby ready-cut Cottage in the Namadgi National Park. It is combined with recent explorations of the fire regeneration at Northern Kosciuszko National Park and remote sections of the Victorian Highlands affected by the 2020 black summer of fires.
Through research of the past and the present, I seek to create a cultural narrative that weaves together humanity and nature, history and natural history. It is both a portrait of a place and a self-portrait, a journey of discovery and walking light in an increasingly fragile environment
All my artworks begin with a walk in nature and I will often describe this as the best part of my job. Most of these walks take place in the Australian Alps both in Victoria and NSW and more recently in the Namadgi National Park where I was fortunate to participate in a two-week residency at Gudgenby Ready Cut Cottage, June 2023. During this time in the landscape, I will document initially with the camera collecting a catalogue of future digital images that I will later transfer onto blown glass forms using a photosensitive sandblast resist, technology I have adapted to large-scale 3D glass forms. My background is in the traditional craft of glass blowing a medium I have worked with for 25 years. As a glassmaker, my main field of expertise is predominantly with coldworking and adapting other traditional glass methods such as the firing of gold lustres, glass paints, mirroring, and grinding and polishing of glass surfaces to achieve the certain desired effects and finishes that have become unique to all of my artworks.
Vessels – landscapes
These blown glass vessels had their genesis in my time in Scandinavia, where at the beginning of my career I travelled frequently as part of my education as a glassmaker and as an artist. These trips have been instrumental in my understanding of glass as a material. They instilled an appreciation for Scandinavian design and helped formulate my aesthetic as an artist. It was in both Denmark and Sweden that I began to look and observe the landscape and I was drawn to the many seasonal changes in colours of the landscape.
In 2023, I spent time rediscovering the mountains in both Victoria and New South Wales. I walked through fire-damaged areas in North Kosciuszko National Park, particularly around Mount Selwyn, Mount Tantangara, Sawyers Hill, along the four-mile track and around the Round Mountain trail. The landscape is still recovering from the 2019/2020 black summer of fires and its strange walking along trails that in the past were shaded by tree foliage and are now fully exposed. Nature is struggling to regrow and the damage is a stark reminder of the ferocity of those fires. Even though there is still much damage, many trees have vivid green regrowth and there was an amazing amount of wildflowers due to the open and exposed new terrain.
Nightfall – Gudgenby Valley I – III & Night fliers – Bogong Moths
These are based on my recent residency in the Namadgi National where I was fortunate to experience the many transformations of light throughout the day. These three vessels reference the fall of night and the recent return of the bogong moth to Gudgenby Valley. The bogong moth is a temperate species of night-flying moth, and will biannually perform long-distance seasonal migrations towards and from the Australian Alps. Unfortunately, due to climate change, deforestation, and pesticides caused their numbers to severely drop from hundreds of thousands to the hundreds. This past summer, they made a recent comeback to Gudgenby Valley in the Namadgi National Park, a rare reversal and something to rejoice. These vessels have a companion wall installation of three small wall-mounted bogong moths titled “Night fliers – bogong moths”.
Holly Grace, Night Fliers – Bogong moths
Bushfire sunset – Mount Selwyn – Round Mountain Trail, Mount Tantangara
Holly Grace, Bushfire Sunset, Mount Selwyn
In early 2023 I spent time around the northern sections of the Kosciuszko National Park, particularly around Mount Selwyn, Mount Tantangara and in the Jagungal Wilderness down along Round Mountain trail. Due to COVID, this was my first visit to these locations since the 2020 black summer of fires. I was astounded and greatly saddened to see how much damage still remained. These fires were so hot that the normal regrowth hasn’t happened and it makes me wonder if it will ever be as it was and what further changes in the environment will result from this intense fire event. I remembered living in bayside Melbourne and the series of ominous sunsets we had at the time when large sections of Victoria and NSW was on fire.
Dusk – Dargo High Plains
After lockdowns and fire damage to roads, I finally got to revisit places in the mountains that I hadn’t been able to visit for some time. One of my favourite roads to traverse is Dargo High Plains Road, it was here that I discovered sections of the Victorian Alps that had been damaged by the fires of 2020. Though the damage is severe there is also much regeneration of the landscape and it was beautiful in the soft blue light of dusk.
Holly Grace, Dargo High Plains
Pretty Valley
Holly Grace, Pretty Valley
Pretty Valley is located not far from Falls Creek and a starting point for many of my walks in the Victorian Alps. These two vessels both feature small scarlet robins, I will often see in the same area. I always know it’s going to be a good walk when I see one of these in my travels.
I wandered lonely as a cloud I – III, Sawyers Hill & Alpine Hill
Holly Grace, I wondered lonely as a cloud
Weather in the mountains can change quickly and often in the early morning, particularly in late Autumn and early Spring I will become enclosed in low cloud cover. These artworks are about those experiences and the sense of loneliness or solitude I feel at those moments. The title “I wandered lonely as a cloud” is from a William Wordsworth poem and the vessels feature an Australian Raven, who on one particular walk on South Rams Head followed me for most of my descent down the mountain. This same walk is featured in another artwork, “A raven’s lament”.
A raven’s lament
“A raven’s lament” Is based on the loneliness and solitude I feel when walking under the low cloud cover that can quickly descend into the mountains. Shrouded in clouds the old snow gums will stand as silent witness to my traverse the only sound I can hear is the raven’s call, a lament to the passing of summer and the beginning of winter. The objects in this artwork are all based on remnants found in Spargo’s hut, the inkwell and raven’s feather represent history both mine and the huts are etched onto the surface of the interior billycan, in a font created from my father’s handwriting, who has inspired much of my love and respect for the landscape.
Remnants Series
Sometimes when walking I will come across small mountain huts, one of my favourites is Spargo’s Hut which is located on the opposite mountainside from Mount Hotham ski village. It is one of the very few huts that I have come across that hasn’t been destroyed from bushfires and inside still has many remnants of the original owner Bill Spargo. All the objects in the artworks “A raven’s lament”, “Snow gum walk – Mount Hotham” and “Walking light, a self-portrait” are based on actual objects I discovered inside Spargo’s Hut and I have tried to remake them as close as possible in glass to the original objects.
These objects represent part of the cultural history of the Australian Alps and introduce a human element to my landscapes. It is with this series of works I can explore narratives from the past and entwine them with the present and the future.
Snow Gum Walk – Mount Hotham
Holly Grace, Snow Gum Walk, Mount Hotham
The walk to Spargo’s Hut starts from Mount Hotham and one of my favourite sections is known as the golden point when you cross around the peak and start descending towards Spargo’s hut. This artwork is about my last trip to Mount Hotham and walking through the snow gum trees and rediscovering Spargo’s hut.
A Lost Song – the Australian Alps
This artwork features a flock of 20 birds, glass recreations of the regent honeyeater, swift parrot, superb parrot, brown tree-creepers, gang gangs, and scarlet robins. Four of these bird species are currently listed as critically endangered and the other two recently been listed as endangered. With both the regent honeyeater and the swift parrot the decline is so rapid that they are losing their songs. Due to the historically low numbers of adult males to learn from the juvenile birds are turning to other bird species as role models and mimicking their calls. In the process mating rituals and songs are being muddied and often lost entirely, resulting in a lack of future breeding and a compounding decline in numbers. It fills me with incredible sadness to know that these unique songs might be lost to us forever. My hope is that this recreation of the birds in flight and their visual melody in glass will help raise some awareness towards their sad fate and the need to support the national parks in their efforts to protect these species of birds and all the other wildlife in the parks.
The Hunter – Wedge-tailed eagle
While I was in the Namadgi I was fortunate to witness different species of birds flocking together to form foraging flocks. Protection against hunters such as wedge-tailed eagles which would often be lurking nearby or soaring high above waiting for an opportune moment to catch an unfortunate forager.
“Walking light, a self-portrait”
Holly Grace, Walking Light – A Self Portrait, Distant, 2023, blown glass with projected video imagery, photographer David McArthur
This artwork is both a memoir and a self-portrait. It’s about my relationship with the landscape and exploring personal connections to a stolen landscape as a non-indigenous Australian. It was inspired by a recent two-week residency at the National Portrait Gallery where I had the opportunity to explore concepts of portraiture combined with an additional two weeks spent at Gudgenby Ready Cut Cottage in the Namadgi National Park, where I had the time to explore the landscape, all its animals and myself as part of this fragile environment.
The residency at Gudgenby Ready-Cut Cottage in Namadgi National Park is managed by Craft Design Canberra.
About Holly Grace
I am an Australian glass artist whose current art practice is based in Arnold St, Cheltenham, Victoria. I am represented by Sabbia Galleries, Sydney. Visit www.hollygrace.com and follow @hollygraceartist
Walking light: A bush journey suspended in glass - Holly Grace wonders through the Australian bush that inspires her enchanting glass works.
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Holly Grace ✿ The Shangri-La of the Jagungal Wilderness - Holly Grace's latest show introduces a theatrical background giving expression to the historical context that underpins her work.
Shelter for the solitary traveller - Holly Grace extraordinary glass works feature the iconic Australian billy can form on which are sandblasted photographic images of the bush. Holly tells us how her time in Denmark, helped her appreciate the importance of light in the Australian landscape.