My name is Sarah Holloway. I use she/her pronouns. I am from what is now called Oakville, Ontario, Canada, on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee, the Anishnabek Nation, the Attawandaron, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. My education began at OCAD University before transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) to complete a degree in furniture design.
I am currently researching the revival of traditional handi-craft through web-based tools and systems as aggregates. In my research, I make furniture using traditional green-woodworking techniques, I weave, hand-code websites, tinker with old computer hardware and put pen to paper. Some notable projects are linked to the right.
In times of isolation, I have been keen to lean on my nonhuman relationships, getting to know the plants and ecosystem around me. In those humbling moments listening, I find communion. I have a lot to learn from plants and their stewards, and I am grateful for all they have taught me already.
~Sarah Holloway 🌻
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𝓐re.na
Ⓘnstagram
MOP Digital Garden
2020-2021
website.
Made in collaboration with the EartHand Gleaners Society.
A website that translated Means of Production Garden into a digital space. The project began with mapping workshops led by myself and EartHand Gleaners society where we archived the plants and their traditional relationships to humans.
The first phase of the project ended in September 2020 with a woven paper map, artist talk, and digital version of the garden.
The next summer I returned to finish the digital garden creating the interface and onboarding each plant through analog photography.
More information about this process can be found in the interview I gave with Or Gallery in Augast 2021.
Means of Production garden is located on the unceded traditional territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations at the corner of East 6th Street and St. Catherines Street in so-called Vancouver, Canada.
External links:
⚘ www.mopdigitalgarden.com
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earthand.com
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Artist Talk! What is a digital garden?
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Are.na board for artist talk
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Interview with Or Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
Apple DAO
2021
sculpture and jpgs.
Commissioned by Earthtone Museum
Enter the digital landscape of the gallery and floating apple dolls sit in anticipation, how my grandparents sat in lawn chairs on their driveway to greet my mom and me when we would visit as a kid. These apple dolls stand non-imposing, welcoming. They are an earnest translation of the ephemeral like a digital landscape. There is friction between the real, the apple doll, and the unreal, their translation into the digital — strife I contend with constantly as I question my relationships between digital and physical as they become increasingly blurred. Returning to a city feels like a pilgrimage to reconnect with friends I have only Instagram DM’d for months or even years. Meeting new faces I have only seen online IRL. What does it look like for digitally native groups to contend and engage in and with physical locations?
DAO( Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is a blockchain-based community that allows digital native communities to share governance and financial systems with trust. Voting and joint crypto wallets diffuse responsibility amongst the group rather than on a single leader. As common with blockchain software the culture of peer-to-peer sharing and transparency of commerce is upheld. I have been working to build a DAO that focuses on discussing what gleaning across digital and physical spaces looks like and how to find resources on these topics across our physical locations.
External links:
⚘Earthtone Museum coming soon
Skate or Dye
2019-ongoing
website, zine, body of works
Made in collaboration with Mikaela Kautzky.
A three-year plus collaboration with artist and friend, Mikaela Kautzky. A zine and body of work exploring the relationships between skateboarding and naturally dying fabric and how these two actives are tools for connecting with
land and place. They are portals to observing the complexities and
responsibilities of this relationship.
Upcoming book and exhibit TBA. Portions of the book can be viewed online.
External links:
⚘ www.skateordye.ca
⚘ mikealakautzky.com
MOP LAN BOX
2021, birch bark, cherry, linen thread & raspberry pi.
MOP✿LAN✿BOX ~~local area network to collect my notesof Means of Production Garden from the walking workshops of 2020. I felt overwhelmed by the scale of the digital garden project so over the winter I began to make tools that could helped me transfer and catalog the knowledge I was given.
Blackberry thorn
2021
A bench made from gifted red oak (worked while green), foraged (invasive) oriental bittersweet and gleaned burlap from Wickenden st.
On the east coast all I can think about are Blackberries. It tripped me out when living in Vancouver to discover blackberries were an invasive species. They literally grow everywhere! Sidewalks, railroad tracks, fields. So when I found out that blackberry was unwanted it made me think about my relationships with more nuance.
🍃
Blackberry gives you food. They give fibres for basket making, but they can also take over an entire area. They coalesce with other plants. If left to their own devices they leave their bitter thorns amuk. Where is the line between helpful and hurtful? The garden cultivated this invasive city dweller. They saw the good in blackberry but were careful to not let it overtake an area. The blackberries were gonna come back, so healthy boundaries had to be made.