Holly A. Senn

Holly A. Senn is known for her botanically inspired sculptures and installations created from discarded library books. In these labor-intensive works she explores the life cycle of ideas; how ideas are generated, dispersed, referenced or forgotten. Holly has exhibited in venues including the Brooklyn Public Library in New York, 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland, Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, and spaces in Tacoma including Spaceworks Tacoma, Tacoma Contemporary’s Woolworth Windows, Fulcrum Gallery, and Kittredge Gallery. Awards include a Tacoma Artists Initiative Program (TAIP) grant from the Tacoma Arts Commission.

Holly received 2008 GAP Award funding for the purchase of an iMac and Photoshop. Holly uses discarded library books to make sculptures and installations in which she explores the life cycle of ideas- the organic, non-linear process in which thoughts have a genesis and then are disseminated, adopted or refuted, forgotten or referenced. As an academic librarian in an age where most people prefer digital resources, she reflects upon each new generation’s collective erasure of some element of the past and its casting of new ideas into the future.

In 2013, Holly was nominated for The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation’s Foundation of Art Award.