Bootsy Holler Artist Talk on Zoom

Wednesday, February 7 at 5 pm Mountain Time ( 4 pm Pacific Time and 7 pm Eastern Time)

Bootsy Holler will show and discuss her new work, Contaminated, which tells her family history with The Manhattan Project. The stories and photos are a layered exploration of the tens of thousands affected by illnesses, the environment, and the secrets the United States Government kept at the Hanford Reservation, where the plutonium was processed for the first nuclear bomb. Richland, the closest town to this highly charged environment, is where Holler grew up.

Contaminated is a layered exploration of the tens of thousands affected by radiation illnesses and the secrets kept at the Hanford Nuclear site. Hanford produced plutonium for the first nuclear bomb used during WWII. In 1942, my Grandfather arrived on the land as a surveyor and started working for the U.S. Government's Manhattan Project. Contaminated is what has happened to the people and the land in southeastern Washington State. This is where I was born. This is where my family lives.

Contaminated:

An undertaking of this magnitude had never been attempted, and the records kept on employees' safety years later were deemed insufficient. The U.S. Department of Labor now has the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, which began in October 2000. This Act now pays out employees and survivors of a family with specific illnesses related to working at the Hanford site.

My family, thousands of other employees, locals, and the land have all been affected. In the 1990s, after the Cold War, the Hanford reactors were decommissioned and left behind 53 million gallons of high-level, complicated mixed nuclear waste. To this day, the Hanford Site contains two-thirds of the United States' radioactive waste - and is the most extensive environmental cleanup.

Contaminated is my experience growing up in a highly charged and secretive town and its impact on the people and land. Each piece is hand-built from family and friends' stories, pictures, and documents.

Holler Bio

Bootsy Holler is an artist and photographer who has been documenting and creating work based on her life, family, memories, and emotions for over 30 years. Stepping outside the flat print, Holler has been creating sculptures through documentary and ephemeral imagery to create new art through a practice she calls “stacking.” By showing the unseen, she often pushes society to stop and feel when experiencing her work.

Holler’s images have been exhibited in museums, galleries, and publications worldwide. She was invited and exhibited at the Shanghai International Photo Festival and Fotofever, Paris. During Photo London, Holler recently exhibited new work revolving around the Manhattan Project. In 2019, she published her second monograph, Treasures: Objects I’ve known all my life. Her seminal work on the Seattle music scene is in the permanent collection at the Grammy Museum, and she is currently working on a book about her experience documenting the scene and her life during the 90s.

Holler lives in a modern treehouse in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and three dogs. Her images come to her through personal emotions, her subconscious, and her meditative visions.

Bootsy Holler Artist Talk 2/7 on Zoom