Shelley N.C. Holl, Artist & Writer

Waterbourne Witness:
Elegies for my New Orleans

Exhibit Statement:

    Over the course of seven years as a resident of New Orleans and five years as a columnist for the Times-Picayune Newspaper, I formed an unbreakable bond with the people and places of South Louisiana. It was a rich society, whose shabby and impoverished exterior cloaked layers of colorful tradition, superstition and eccentricity. Everyone told stories: remarkable, often histrionic tales that tied the neighborhood snowball stand, corner bar or barbershop into a complicated web of family, parish and city history. During my travels, I sketched, photographed or scribbled notes constantly. In time the material I gathered overflowed my weekly column into a book and my sketches became inspiration for three solo exhibitions of figurative art.

    After the levees broke in New Orleans and the city sank beneath the muddy waters of Lake Pontchartrain, I watched in morbid fascination as one familiar corner after another appeared in almost unrecognizable form on my television set. When the flood waters receded and the extent of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation came to light, I realized that the city which lives so vividly in my memory is, in some neighborhoods, now little more than that: a place that exists in mind and heart alone.

    Since then, the media images that so profoundly affected us all have dominated my paintings, and I began a series of work using new methods and materials. Because I believe that artists have a responsibility to bear witness to the global, political and personal I combine images from the public sphere (newspaper, television and internet) with my own images, some painted, some computer manipulated. I feel an urgency to share my images in the hope that it will help us not to forget.

Contact Information:

For further information about the artist or book, please contact Shelley N.C. Holl via

email at: shelley@usfamily.net

Shelley Holl’s artwork and book will be on display in the Fellowship Hall Art Gallery from September 28 to October 26, 2008. Lynnhurst Congregational UCC Church,4501 Colfax Ave S, Minneapolis. Office hours: Tuesday - Friday 9:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. Please contact us with any questions: 612-827-6157

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Showing September 28 to October 26, 2008 in the Lynnhurst Gallery:

Shelley N.C. Holl, Artist & Writer

Waterbourne Witness: Elegies for my New Orleans

Exhibit Statement:

Contact Information:

<< Back to Lynnhurst Gallery Calendar

Waterbourne Witness:
Elegies for my New Orleans