Artist to Watch: Holly Hendry Takes Playful Approach to Inner Workings of the Body

A similar energy pervades her new series for Stephen Friedman Gallery’s sold-out booth at Frieze New York in May, which reflects the artist’s shift toward smaller scale. There, a long pink tongue and a protruding nose appear among sheets of “paper” cast in clay or Jesmonite (an eco-friendly alternative to resin), all the elements thrown together on the wall as if on a pinboard. Preparing for the presentation was a “moment where I could just be in the studio,” Hendry says, which marks a change from recent years, when she produced large outdoor pieces that required “rigid planing” with structural engineers.

Hendry describes feeling a sense of intimacy with the artworks as the making process “unraveled” intuitively from experimentation with materials, including a new foray into glassblowing. “I think when my work is at its best, it’s got an element of the unknown,” she says. Although the artist first plots her ideas in a notebook, “a lot of the time, the final thing is quite far from the original drawing.” Judging when a piece is ready often comes down to whether the “feeling or movement” captured in the sketch has made the leap into three-dimensional “physicality.”

In keeping with the malleable, flowing forms she crafts, Hendry hopes the meaning of the sculpture will shape-shift over time. “Once you do those types of works, you’re not really the key part of it anymore,” she says. “It becomes part of a larger conversation or existence within the city.”

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Fall Issue in the “Artists to Watch” section. Subscribe to the magazine.