ARTIST BIO

Holly Guertin is a contemporary fiber artist creating in felt, embroidery, and crochet. She received her BFA in Fibers from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in 2011 and is currently based in the Philadelphia, PA area. She has exhibited work at Twenty*Twenty House (2023 & 2024), Gallery 26 (2023), and Ogden Museum of Southern Art (2017). Her work has been featured in Surface Design Journal (2025), Dappled Things (2025), Colossal (2024), Business of Home (2023). In 2019, Guertin collaborated with Anthropologie to create collections for Fall Home Goods and Holiday Decor inspired by her artworks. “All Like Sheep” (2011), “Pink Sheepskin” (2018), and “Rise and Fall” (2023) are exhibited in SCAD’s Permanent Collection.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work recognizes the creativity entwined in every surface of the world and the human dignity that is revealed through our participation with it. The brilliant color work in a hummingbird’s feathers, the spots on a pufferfish, even the stripes in a blade of grass are all ordinary moments of spectacular ornament. I participate in this same creativity as I integrate my own concepts and handwork within the ingenuity and limitations of nature.

While some of the early twentieth century modernists may have believed that the “evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects,”1 my work asserts that to remove ornament from our lives is to deny our very nature. The removal of ornament over the last century has sincerely fractured our understanding of human creativity, devastated our relationship between material and society, and has left us with a deeply impoverished view of beauty and art.

I embrace both form and matter, material and intellect, body and soul to experience them together as a dynamic, unified human experience. In viewing the world as a gift to be received, the human person is tasked with respect and reverence to its abundance. Through this reverence, I utilize deeply-rooted symbols of relationships to contemplate the role of repetition and labor.

I highlight the social and utilitarian benefits of wool and textile crafts to engage in discourse with our culture’s use of technology and intelligence. Fiber art and textiles have a unique ability to express the depths of the human experience through intertwining the intellectual concept to physical, time-intensive handwork. Through an encounter with beauty, I connect viewers to the tactile and the reality of our experience as a whole human person.

1 Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” 1910

CURRICULUM VITAE (CV)

EXHIBITIONS

2024: Eco Impressions: Art for a Sustainable Future, 20*20 Gallery

2023: Small Works Show, Gallery 26

2023: Threads of Memory, 20*20 House Gallery

2017: Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Artist Spotlight

2015: High Point Cafe, Ernie and Irene

2011: SCAD Fibers Final Show

2010: SCAD Fibers: Open Studio

COMMISSIONS

2024: Magnolia, private collector, California