About

Holly Andres calls on the rich visual history of film and narrative photography in her works, often citing personal as well as fictitious memories from childhood. Her various series explore the transition to womanhood, featuring intensely curious child or adolescent protagonists exploring their domestic surroundings, much like a teen pulp novels from the 1960s and 1970s, revealing abandoned suitcases, hidden passages, mysterious clues like skeleton keys and golden lockets. For Andres, these discoveries and mysteries are metaphors for rites of passage and the inevitable loss of innocence. Her coordination of rich, stylized color palettes, elaborate sets and dramatic lighting recall Hitchcock thrillers, fashion photography and tableau photography.

Andres was represented in the Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum in 2006. Andres’ series The Homecoming premiered at The Hallie Ford Museum in Salem, Oregon in 2013. Holly Andres’ work is included in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; The Elton John Foundation, Atlanta, Georgia; Columbus Museum, Georgia; and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon; among others. Andres’ work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Art in America, Artforum, Art News, Elle Magazine, W, and The Los Angeles Times.

A multidisciplinary artist, Andres works in film, photography, sculpture and installation and has collaborated on short films that were featured in the Portland International Film Festival, the Baltimore Women’s Film Festival and the Perpetual Art Machine in New York. Holly Andres received her B.F.A. from the University of Montana in 2002, and her M.F.A. from Portland State University in 2004, where she currently teaches video and photography classes at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR.