Shaunda Holloway Shows Up

For Shaunda Holloway, art is all about getting yourself a seat at the table. It’s a way to be seen, to be heard, to express yourself and then have other people respond to your expression. 

Those are the themes of her latest exhibition, ​“Faces at the Table,” in collaboration with Jasmine Nikole, which has been on display at Atticus Bookstore & Cafe from June 6 through Tuesday.

Two of Holloway’s pieces incorporated the table itself. She made the pyrography pieces ​“One Thousand Faces” and ​“GATHER AT THE TABLE” by using a torch underneath pieces of table tops, sourced from the restaurant where she used to work.

“Faces at the table also relates to showing up in spaces,” Holloway said, referring to the decision of the artist to share their art with the world. ​“You have to make a decision to be seen. It’s not easy to show up and be seen, but you have to do it.”

She’s also invested in giving other artists the same platform to be seen. When Holloway was offered the opportunity to display her work at Atticus, she made the decision to invite Nikola to join her. ​“It’s much more impactful to show beyond yourself, to include other artist’s work,” she said. Holloway believed that the interactions between the two art styles made all the artwork stronger. ​“Iron sharpens iron,” she said.

Art has suffused Holloway’s life since she was a young child. ​“Making art is never something to not do,” she said. ​“It is definitely aligned with the reasons I breathe.”

As a child, Holloway frequently drew and created, although she didn’t remember having a strong sense of herself as an artist. For her, it was more about self-expression. ​“I knew that I wanted to be heard,” Holloway said. ​“Back then people used to say a child should be seen and not heard, but I knew that I wanted to be heard.”

Holloway grew up in New Haven and Hamden. Her mother was very creative, as was her maternal aunt, one of the first female unionized bricklayers in Connecticut. She remembers walking down the street in high school, and hearing her aunt calling down to her from the scaffolding. 

“For me to hear that was very powerful,” she said. ​“You know, because you’re way up on the scaffolding but I can still hear you.” It impressed her, and impressed upon her the idea of art as a method of communication. Today, when Holloway walks past the building on the corner of Whitney and Grove Street, she thinks of her aunt helping build it.

Her paternal uncle was a painter. Holloway remembers seeing his paintings, and the way they helped unlock her own potential. ​“I knew, just by looking at my uncle’s paintings, that gift was in my DNA,” she said. From there, she was able to discover and develop her own style, distinct from his.

Holloway’s formal commitment to the arts developed when she took an art class at Creative Arts Workshop in the early 1990s. When her grandmother asked her what she wanted for Christmas, Holloway said that she wanted to take an art class. She received a scholarship, and her grandmother gave her the additional money for the course and to buy her own supplies. Although she took classes in a wide array of mediums, Holloway was quickly drawn to printmaking.

“I found that I liked the surprise,” she said. ​“I liked pulling the print and seeing what would happen once you ran the paper through the press.”

“Printmaking offers me a jambalaya of techniques, and I can pick and choose whatever seasonings I want to put in that gumbo,” she added.

Holloway began to define her style through layers, saturated colors, contrast, the incorporation of nature, and the elevation of Black culture. Art became her way of processing and responding to anything happening in the world or in her community. Her print, ​“Seen,” is a response to the murder of George Floyd. But Holloway chooses to express the triumphs as well of the tragedies of Black Americans.

“It is my goal to share the best of it,” she said. ​“We can count on all sorts of contrasting propaganda, but I choose to make sure what I see is seen.”

Still, Holloway finds it hard to explain her pieces. As much as she is putting her voice out there to be heard, her art is a two-way street, as much dependent on the viewer’s interpretation as on what the artist intended. ​“What I love about art is no matter what I wish to convey, the viewer brings to the piece wherever they come from,” she said.

The connection between humans and nature features heavily in Holloway’s work. Some of her pieces feature overlapping leaves and faces, breaking down the boundaries between the manmade and natural worlds. Holloway also seeks to bring awareness to the loss of that natural world. ​“There was a time when one could walk down the street in the summertime and practically crush all the caterpillars because there were so many butterflies,” she said. ​“Now I can’t tell you when the last time I saw a caterpillar was. That’s very important to me.”

This need to communicate ideas to others serves Holloway well in her career as a teacher, first at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School for two years in the 90s, and then at Creative Arts Workshop starting around 2020. ​“As a teaching artist I like to ignite something in people who don’t think they’re creative,” she said.

She described a student at Co-op High School who claimed that he couldn’t be an artist, but who she felt was one of her most creative students. Once, he drew an intricate penciled house, where all the lines were uneven, but ​“somehow the symmetry was perfect.”

“That’s what I’m saying about creativity, the vastness of it,” Holloway said. ​“There are just so many ways to be creative.”

Holloway’s biggest challenge as an artist is not having an active studio. She works in her apartment, with her own printing press. As someone who likes to paint very large, the constraints of her limited space are frustrating. Holloway dreams big, and her work is expressive of that fact.

She likes to incorporate photographs into her prints. She learned layering at Creative Arts Workshop, and she layers the photographs with ink. ​“I just find that it gives the work more depth,” she said. ​“I won’t say that it’s impossible to overwork it, cause I’m guilty of that, but I do like pushing the envelope and seeing what can be done with a piece.”

“In printmaking, you often hear the term forgiving,” Holloway added. ​“But it’s more than forgiving, it’s a playground for possibilities…the more you give yourself the freedom to play, the more you develop your style.”

Holloway has worked hard for a seat at the table. She is proud of the continuity of her career, and her ability to work through obstacles. Creating gives her a way to communicate her ideas, and herself, to others, and to have them respond to her in turn. Most of all, for Holloway, art is about ​“taking ownership of your place in the world.” As her artwork proves, the table is more than just a piece of wood. It’s a jumping-off point for a new discussion, one that Holloway is more than ready to have.