Nationally acclaimed silk artist and Nova Scotia native Holly Carr will be the first person to tell you her imagination never sleeps. She visualizes and inhabits a world that is spectacularly her own.
Carr has become famous for her vibrant, bold, lush silk paintings and her live art performances. A graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, she credits her mother-in-law with discovering her chosen medium when she gifted Carr with a silk-painting course at Dalhousie’s Costume Studies and Carr fell in love.
Carr has performed with such diverse entities as symphony orchestras across Canada, the Toledo Symphony in Ohio, esteemed violinist Ming Lee (for the president of Singapore) and the late Stuart McLean and the Vinyl Cafe (a 26-city, cross-Canada tour).
Carr’s inaugural “large-scale” live performance was for a Bust-A-Move cancer fundraiser in Halifax in 2013, where she painted for six hours on a five-by-nine-metre backdrop.
The prolific painter challenges herself by constantly experimenting with new, more complex projects and says one usually leads to another: “If you had a little map, each project is interconnected.”
Case in point was the majestic set Carr painted for last year’s Eastern Front Theatre and Neptune Theatre production of Half-Cracked: The Legend of Sugar Mary for which she won a Theatre Nova Scotia Merritt Award for outstanding scenic design.
Carr says the Merritt Award was “exciting and unexpected as I was just visiting that world."
But it boosted her confidence enough to develop her own stage production, Light in the Forest, which premiered Saturday at St. Matthew’s United Church.
The show is an all-ages, multimedia production that Carr conceptualized, produced and directed. Carr created the soaring silk sets and costumes and will paint live on stage during the event. She worked closely with music director and pianist Jennifer King and choreographer/dancer Veronique MacKenzie and had her pulse on every aspect of the production.
“It has been a labour of love,” says Carr. “It is a mental wellness piece about resilience and hope. It brings the restorative properties of art and nature together in one experience.”
Carr also penned an original song (her first) which is featured in the show. She delights that the tune came to her while driving to Toronto with her husband and daughter, both of whom contributed to the lyrics of the last two verses.
The Annapolis Valley Honour Choir junior choir has recorded the song for the inaugural show and Carr hopes to have the choir perform live when she stages the show in Wolfville next spring.
She is especially thrilled that the Canadian Mental Health Association (Nova Scotia Division) is endorsing the message of her show and she hopes to work with them on future dates.
As a companion piece to the stage production, Carr has created a children’s book by the same name, featuring her dynamic artwork. It follows the arc of the show and she anticipates it will be available to the public by early 2020.
The Light in the Forest set will also be on display as an interactive installation for two weeks beginning Jan. 17, 2020, at the Natural History Museum in Halifax.
Never one to rest, Carr has an upcoming show of new works at Secord Gallery in Halifax, with an opening reception on Nov. 7. It will be the second only joint exhibit with her artist husband, Alan Bateman.
Carr says her artwork for the show is inspired by Light in the Forest while Bateman’s realistic paintings reflect his favourite theme, Home, in the Annapolis Valley near Canning, N.S., where he and Carr reside and work in their 200-year-old farmhouse and studio.
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