Through the Looking Glass by Holly Holmes & Tom Burtonwood

Through the Looking Glass

Holly Holmes and Tom Burtonwood

Installation

2025

“Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through—” She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.

In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room.”

~ Lewis Carroll

“Through The Looking-Glass

And What Alice Found There”

The microscope is a looking glass that gifts people enhanced optical abilities to enter worlds both magical and far away. Worlds that we carry around with us in our pockets, tread underfoot and skate past with nary a passing thought.

Holly Holmes and Tom Burtonwood have been collaborating since 1999. Their last project together was exhibited at the Chicago Design Museum in 2022. For their project with Buddy they combined their current individual research and studio practices. For Holmes this meant bringing her fiber techniques and cellular observations to the table and for Burtonwood he enlarged elements of his signature Würfel sculptures as structures for Holmes tuftings to live upon.

Together they visited Buddy and the Cultural Center transparent tape and clear baggies in hand to sample dust and detritus from around the building. Back in the studio Holmes and Burtonwood studied the cellular structures through the microscope visually moving through the images to find moments of interest and fascination. From there Holmes sketched out designs and translated them onto cloth with yarn using her tufting apparatus. The tufted rugs are mapped onto the open faces of two enlarged modules from Burtonwood’s ongoing project - A Cube is a Rectangle. A video monitor invites passerby to gaze into the viewer, study findings from the microscope and see where they were sampled from.

Tom Burtonwood (b. United Kingdom) is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist, curator and educator. He/they hold an MFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (USA) and a BA from Loughborough College of Art (UK). He/they are Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent venues presenting Burtonwood's work include Taiteen Talo and Tramhall, both Turku, Finland; MOM Art Space, Hamburg, Germany; MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Center, Helsinki, Finland; Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, MO; 21c Museum Hotel, Chicago; Buddy, Chicago, IL; Material, Chicago; The Donut Shop, Chicago; Bert Green Fine Art, Chicago; DesignLab Gallery, Pasadena, CA; Dock 6, Chicago, IL; Monaco, St. Louis, MO; Platform, Evanston; Riverside Art Center, Riverside, IL; CICA Museum Gyeonggi-do, Korea; DEMO Project, Springfield, IL; Terrain Biennial 2017, Oak Park, IL. Burtonwood is a member of the international art collective videokaffe and a board member and co-organizer of Terrain Exhibitions, an Oak Park based not for profit arts organization. Terrain makes private space public through sculpture, installation, performance and interventions. Apart from Terrain he/they have curated over twenty exhibitions of contemporary art working with Chicago - based artist run galleries GARDENfresh (2002 - 2009) and What It Is (2010 - 2015)

Holly Holmes is a painter, sculptor, educator, planner and curator. She received a BFA in painting from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently teaches at Columbia College Chicago and SAIC. Holmes was a founding board member of Terrain Exhibitions, producing a residency program and the Terrain Biennial. She is currently a member of Videokaffe, an international art collective with members in Finland and North America. Holmes has shown her work at, the Riverside Arts Center, Riverside, IL; Epiphany Center for the Arts, Chicago IL; Cultural Kaleidoscope at Taiteen Talo, Turku, Finland; Ohklohomo, Chicago; Sluice expo, Colchester, UK; MOM Art Space, Hamburg, Germany; MUU Contemporary Art Center Helsinki, Finland; Material, Chicago; The Design Museum, Chicago; Dominican University; River Forest, IL, Kunsthuis Gallery; Crayke, UK and ArtTeleported, CICA; Queens, New York. Her art is held in public and private collections throughout the world.