Check Out Randolph Holland’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Randolph Holland

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was born in Berkeley, California, where I grew up and attended both high school and college. For a couple of years after college I was making art, living in Emeryville and kicking around in the Bay Area. In 1985, New York was really happening for visual artists so I decided to move to New York City for graduate school where I earned my Masters degree in Fine Art at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
I was selling some of my own work, working in a restaurant and also working for Tyler Graphics, a print making shop, where Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Linda Benglis and many other established artists had their print work hand done and other three dimensional editions made by hand. As a way to earn extra money and pay back tuition bills I also started building sets for SNL and David Letterman at the NBC scene shop out in Queens, New York.
Feeling as though our luck in New York was running low by the early 1990’s my wife and I decided to move west, driving in a rented moving truck the day the Rodney King riots broke out. We flipped a coin around Denver ; heads, San Francisco, tails , Los Angeles.
Tails it was.
My first studio here was a small store front in Venice, just off of Abbot Kinney. A slow and quiet place in the early 1990’s, but choc a bloc with artists and a few galleries. I continue to work in the entertainment industry as well as making my art. That is the genesis of my company Art + Industry.
Very Literal ! I have my studio and gallery in Leimert Park.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It is probably very rarely a smooth road for anyone living in the arts, yet I can’t imagine it any other way.

The bumps and hurts are all a part of the adventure that winds through the mind and back out onto the art.

The binary battles between art versus commerce, comfort versus poverty, and family versus selfishness are
age- old, human rules.

Without the challenges, i.e. with easy answers and givens, it would all be kind of boring.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
The series of sculptures that I am making now are carved wood Totems that are etched and filigreed and painted.

I cast a few in bronze, when I can afford it, which are colored with various patinas, to endure harsher conditions outside.

Some hang on the wall , others are freestanding.

I have pretty much flown happily below the art market radar for a long time. I do have my appreciators and private collectors and I have shown work across the country and in Europe.

I think that artists most vibrant work comes outside of the marketplace; whether that means psychologically or practically. The creative unconscious is the best; When I look at a piece and wonder how I ever even made it.

I have a few works in remote, barely visited places in the world. Made with found materials from the specific place and left there to perhaps never be discovered by humans. I will never know if anyone ever comes across one of these sculptures, which is the two way mystery ! Who made this ? Or has anyone ever seen that sculpture that I did in so and so….

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I have a Patina recipe book. It is essentially a compendium of historic and modern patina ingredients, that when combined, result in specific colored patinas on bronze or other alloys.
It is an incredible resource, and once you have made a specific recipe and gotten the desired color it is really fun to make small chemical changes and see what you get as a result.

Pricing:

• My work pricing ranges from the low hundreds to the high thousands.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://RandolphHolland.com
• Instagram: @randolph-holland
• Other: Art + Industry – on google maps

Image Credits
All photos by Randolph Holland