Atelier Hollace M. Metzger

Hollace M. Metzger

 

Metzger is an author, design architect, visual and conceptual artist born and raised in the United States’ mid-west. She obtained her professional degree in architecture at the University of Kentucky, spending two terms in Venice, Italy. In Venice, Hollace flourished as a student and artist while independently studying classical music, painting and commencing a form of poetic writing, a way to re-interpret surrounding environments through a combination of verbal sketches, descriptive emotion, sound and events of spatial experiences supplementary to drawings. In 1999, Metzger’s proposal for a Lagoon welcoming center / music school and sustainable breakwall system between the cities of Mestre and Venice was recognized in the newspaper Il Gazzettino.

After returning to the U.S., Metzger completed design studies concurrently while studying graduate level 16th/17th-Century literature and continued investigation in composition through painting, claiming in her graduate thesis, “Kin-Aesthetic Fourth Dimension“, that architecture, human-scale / spatial experience, psychology and art-as-process should remain combined, conscious objectives in architectural practice and education. Renaissance-based and rooted in numerous texts including Colin Rowe & Robert Slutzky’s Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, this thesis evolved into a life-study for Metzger. She credits Mark Clary, professors Carol Buhrman, Keith Plymale, Michael Cranfill and Prof. Maria Dall’erba-Ricci (Venice) for their guidance and tutelage during this developmental time.

In 2000, Metzger relocated to New York City to complete her architectural apprenticeship. There, while employed by the offices of the deans of Yale and then CUNY Schools of Architecture, she recommenced creative writing as a means to record urban experiences, the altered velocity of time, transport and thoughts during the subway commute to and from her home in Brooklyn. Her painting developed in her studios in Fort Greene, Red Hook, Bedford-Stuyvesant and finally in the artists’ community of Williamsburg. Here, writing and abstract art were further developed as a means of recording the city’s energy, of personal connection and of exploring what was not being conveyed in the professional world. After briefly returning to architectural and urban studies with the Architectural Association of London, Metzger began performing her writings and exhibiting some paintings in New York and Brooklyn in 2006-7. Well received, these public forums provided means for her to further develop individual creative motives eventually leading to the release of her first book, allowing her art to migrate beyond the United States and reach a new, finished dimension through collaboration.

Metzger crossed the Atlantic for Dublin in the summer of 2007, touring western Europe before taking residence in Paris, France. In 2011, she established MiDEA, a cross-disciplinary design Atelier where she continued investigation into and held commissioned projects in painting, voice, writing, residential design, public art installations, studies in dance and photography. Living between Reims and Paris from 2011-12, her fifth book of poetry and prose, 3VOLVE, was completed while achieving her diploma in French language studies from the Universite de Reims. The book’s text reveals how differing culture, experiences, languages and the masculine-feminine merge in communication. Its format, highly influenced by an investigation into photography and consciousness of one’s own language transformation, is reminiscent of, in its final presentation, the 1950’s Concrete Poetry manifesto (proceeded by the Futurists and “sound poets”). In 3VOLVE, Metzger freely re-configures space and time as the memory’s frame surrounding moments sought to be committed to memory while reinforcing the importance of haptic communication, touch and being touched, in an age when it is seemingly being lost. Here, words, sound and sentiments reconfigure memories to form, or recreate, Space.

Metzger is now author of:  Observing the Labyrinth from Heaven (2007, 2008), Transcriptions of Time (2009),  Why the WilloW (2010), Eternal Story (2011) and 3VOLVE (2013), OUT | TUO (2018) and agάpe [simply love] (2019), collections combining her photography and art with poetry and prose, and author-vocalist of:  Observing the Labyrinth from Heaven: Paris Recordings (2008), TranSynPhony (2010) and Why the WilloW (2011). In addition to vocal and writing credits on European independent record labels, her authorship (and often accompanying fine-art and/or stage-art) C.V. now includes an extensive list of literary journals and collaborations for independent European film, theatre and ballet, with choreographers, visual artists and musicians throughout western Europe, the US, UK and Canada as well as New Zealand, Mexico, Columbia, Romania and India.

Deeply rooted in theories of Time-Space, Movement, Memory & Sentiment, memory’s mental photographs and how we adapt to/adopt Place’s perceived distortions, the rhythm of movement (“music”) and insights of the conscious traveler are ever-present in Metzger’s work. Although through the individual artist’s voice, how one moves through and interprets space, forms words or an emotion in that time frame is often left open and unprescribed so that the individual affront Metzger’s work is engaged, even motivated, to reflect inwards then more profoundly towards or away from him or herself.

Metzger returned to the United States’ mid-west in 2013, later traveling cross-country to further develop her work. She took residence in Anchorage, Alaska, where she completed a brief study with UAA’s civil engineering department and performed locally while fulfilling further commissioned painting studies, continued writing her first novel about living in New York City, and completed a sixth book of poetry entitled OUT | TUO (2018). Recapitulating integration into French society, the book focuses on impressions of the author’s return to her country after having been displaced from it for so long, and how she discovers the sense of “Be-longing” is no longer found within one particular place. Rather, it has become an essence of being.

Returning to architectural practice and after taking a number of work-related journeys to the Arctic Circle from 2015-2016, Metzger then relocated to Athens, Greece, in the summer of 2016 to further explore collaborative work (initiated in 2007) while conducting an urban analysis study of the city, “Among Ruins: Rethinking Antiquity“, described as:  An ongoing analysis of present day Athens, Greece, through reflections of its past, infrastructure, current socio-economic state, and modern Man’s role within it. Proving to be existentialist through and through in her work, Metzger also exhibited a retrospective series, “sub/Conscious (2007-2013)“ (2017), in Paris, France, together with her most recent “OUT-Series“ (2013-2016) in Juneau and Anchorage, Alaska.

In 2020 and at the onset of the Covid pandemic, Metzger arrived in Tuscany, Italy, leading her to conduct her creative and professional life between Paris, France, and the origin city of her most inspirational mentors from her time living in Venice, Leonardo Ricci & Maria Dall’erba Ricci, in Florence. After revisiting Venice in 2021, the passing of Mrs. Ricci inspired Metzger’s further exploration of the Ricci legacy in Florence, in addition to analysis of the architectural integration of modern Ricci structures within the city’s fabric.
Currently underway, while also studying Italian, French, Spanish and German languages and volunteering for the Croce Rossa Italiana (Red Cross of Italy) for Ukraine since the onset of the war, are Metzger’s first independent architectural design projects in Paris and Alaska, continued collaborations, painting commissions, and an eighth full volume of “pandemic poetry” scheduled for release in 2024.

* photo © Nikola Tamindzic / HOMEOFTHEVAIN

 

 

 

 

 

Residence & Travelogue

1975  born in Cleveland, Ohio, USA

1980’s
Panama City, Florida
Nassau, Bahamas
Paradise Island, Bahamas
Cancun, Mexico
Chichen Itza, Mexico
Puerta Vallarta, Mexico

1990′s
Orlando, Florida
Athens, Ohio
Aspen, Colorado
Rattlesnake Island, Ohio
Nassau, Bahamas
Hilton Head, South Carolina
Sarasota, Florida
Toronto, Canada
Lake Placid, New York
Chautauqua, New York

1994
– living in Lexington, Kentucky
New York, New York
Chicago, Illinois
Wheeling, West Virginia

1995
Park City, Utah

1996
New Orleans, Louisiana
Bear Run, Pennsylvania
Chagrin Falls, Ohio
Lexington, Kentucky
– living in Venice, Italy
Milan, Italy
Como, Italy
Zurich, Switzerland
Munich, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Calais, France
Dover, England
London, England
Paris, France
Bilbao, Spain
Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Barcelona, Spain
Zaragoza, Spain
Avignon, France
Marseille, France
Nice, France
Rome, Italy
Genova, Italy
Mantova, Italy
Verona, Italy
Savona, Italy
San Vito d’Altivole, Italy

1997
– living in Lexington, Kentucky
Cleveland, Ohio

1998
Louisville, Kentucky
– living in Venice, Italy
Paris, France
Barcelona, Spain
Dijon, France
Rome, Italy
Vienna, Austria
Innsbruck, Austria
Mutters, Austria
Verona, Italy

1999
– living in Lexington, Kentucky
Cincinnati, Ohio

2000
– living in Brooklyn, New York

2001
New York, New York
Raffles City, Singapore

2002
Boston, Massachusetts

2003
Los Angeles, California
Beverly Hills, California
New Haven, Connecticut

2004
San Francisco, California
Washington, D.C.
Lexington, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky

2005
London, England
Glasgow, Scotland
Milan, Italy
Venice, Italy

2006
New York, New York

2007
Dublin, Ireland
Venice, Italy
Junas, France
Athens, Greece
Piraeus, Greece
Glasgow, Scotland
– living in Drumgelloch, Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland
– living in Montmartre, Paris, France

2008
– living in Paris, France
Ellezelles, Belgium
Mannheim, Germany
Karlsruhe, Germany
Stuttgart, Germany
Toulouse, France
Normandy, France

2009
Versailles, France
Mont Saint-Michel, France
Caen, France
Rouen, France
Normandy, France

2010
– living in Mayenne, France
Saint-Malo, France
Lassay-les-Châteaux, France
Langrune-sur-Mer, France
Gorron, France
Saint-James, France
Chartres, France
Le Treport, France
Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Amiens, France
Dieppe, France
Cleveland, Ohio
– living in Paris, France

2011
Madrid, Spain
New York, New York
Cleveland, Ohio
Paris, France
Normandy, France
Mayenne, France
Dublin, Ireland
Galway, Ireland
Aran Islands, Ireland
County Kerry, Ireland
County Clare, Ireland
County Cork, Ireland
Dublin, Ireland
Versailles, France

2012
– living in Reims, France
Epernay, France
Chalons-en-Champagne, France
Berlin, Germany
Lille, France

2013
– living in Paris, France
Cleveland, Ohio
Erie, Pennsylvania
Seattle, Washington
Fairbanks, Alaska
Whittier, Alaska
– living in Anchorage, Alaska

2014
Juneau, Alaska
Barrow, Alaska

2015
Moscow, Russia
Venice, Italy
Seattle, Washington

2016
Anchorage, Alaska
– living in Athens, Greece
Hydra Island, Greece
Poros Island, Greece
Hydra Island, Greece

2019
– living in Poros, Greece
– living in Piraeus, Greece
– living in Kypséli, Attiki, Greece
Palaiá Fókaia, Attiki, Greece

2020
Athens, Greece
Rome, Italy
– living in Rufina, Italy
– living in Rufina-Pomino, Italy
– living in Florence, Italy

2021
Bologna, Italy
Venice, Italy
New York, New York
Erie, Pennsylvania
Paris, France
Mestre, Italy
Rufina, Italy
– living between Florence, Italy / Paris, France

2022
Italian Riviera, Italy
French Riviera, France
Cannes & Nice, France
Pisa & Marina de Vecchiano, Italy
Livorno, Italy
Rufina, Italy
Venice, italy

2023
Siena, Italy
San Gimignano, Italy
Marina di Massa, Italy
Marina de Vecchiano, Italy
Saltino, Italy
Marina di Massa, Italy
Saltino, Italy
Lago Nero (Pistoia), Italy

[ – the Journey – ]
[ – (+) – ]