The figure at the center of Tracy Holmes’ exhibition invitation is a woman draped head to toe in a dress made of individual flowers — roughly 1,000 of them, each one sculpted by hand. She is not looking outward. She is hugging herself.
“All love starts with loving ourselves,” Holmes said. “And people are drawn to people that love themselves.”
That ceramic sculpture, titled “A Woman Loved,” took Holmes four months to complete and now anchors “Meditation and Metaphor,” a solo exhibition running through Sept. 27 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, 3800 E. River Road. The show, which is free and open to the public, features 144 pieces — original watercolors, giclée prints and ceramic sculptures — drawn from the past five years of Holmes’ career as a Tucson artist.
“It feels really good after all the work that I’ve put in to see it all together,” she said.
Holmes came to Tucson about 20 years ago, following her husband’s graduate work in North Carolina and before that, her own studies at Brigham Young University, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in ceramics and a teaching certificate. She grew up in Northern California and initially had no particular connection to the desert. That changed quickly.
“I was so fascinated that there is so much life that can thrive here, even though it is so crazy hot,” she said. Over time, that fascination became a body of work: more than 100 watercolor paintings documenting the animals and plants of the Sonoran Desert. Hummingbirds nesting in her backyard. Saguaros. The quiet, resilient life of a landscape that surprises you.
Those watercolors share the gallery’s 72-foot-long walls with Holmes’ ceramic sculptures, and she is the first to acknowledge the two bodies of work don’t seem to belong together at first glance.
“My watercolors are very much I’m painting what I see,” she said. “And my sculptures are more of sculpting what I feel.”
The sculptures carry the weight of the exhibition’s themes: self-love, endurance and the idea that brokenness and beauty are not opposites. One of the central pieces, “And Yet She Persisted,” draws on the Japanese art of kintsugi — the practice of repairing shattered pottery with gold lacquer, so that the seam of repair becomes part of the object’s beauty rather than something to hide.
“I have a female figure that has these kintsugi mending lines all through her body, and she’s holding a piece that she is fitting back into herself,” Holmes said. “Sometimes we need to glue ourselves back together. We can still keep going — hence the title.”
Holmes works from a process that is part observation, part meditation. She describes listening to inspirational talks or books, catching a thought and asking herself: How do I portray this visually? Sketches follow. Then, for the figurative sculptures, a model. Then the slow work of the hands.
“Creating is almost an aesthetic experience,” she said. “To take something that is living in your head and actually put it out on paper or in clay — it makes your life more meaningful.”
Her work has reached audiences well beyond Tucson’s gallery walls. Holmes’ watercolors have been commissioned for 13 murals in Walmart locations across the country, each one painted at home at one-tenth scale in watercolor before being scanned and printed at full size by a company called Now Art. She has also had her artwork printed on the Pima County Library card, and her sculptures have placed in national and international competitions. But “Meditation and Metaphor” is something different — a first.
“This has been a lifelong goal to have a solo show,” Holmes said. “I’ve been in lots of local galleries and several competitions, national and international, but never had a chance to bring everything I do to the table in one setting. I’ve just been brought to tears several times. It feels so good to have it all come together.”
As for what she hopes visitors take away, Holmes keeps it simple.
“I hope they take away that it’s good to stop and think. It’s good to stop and see the beautiful. It’s good to stop and ponder what you’re feeling — and it’s OK to share those feelings. So much of our society is, ‘I’m fine,’ and often we’re not fine, and it’s okay to share that with the world, because as we are more vulnerable, we can help each other get through hard times.”
“Meditation and Metaphor” runs through Sept. 27 at the Tucson J, 3800 E. River Road. The gallery is open most days 8 a.m.-6 p.m. — check the website for closures. Admission is free. An artist talk and family art project is scheduled Aug. 27, 5-6:30 p.m. An artist reception takes place Sept. 24, 6-7:30 p.m.
