Hollis Hammonds

She was a 2016 Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, NC.

Austin Chronicle named her work one of the top ten "most memorable art of 2015" for her installation, Blanket of Fog, at Women & Their Work. The same year she spoke on a panel about drawing at the CAA conference with artists Jane Hammond, Richard Moninski and Elise Engler.

Hammonds works in multi-media often mixing sculpture with drawing in installations. Her work has been exhibited widely including at Dishman Art Museum in Beaumont, TX; Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC; the Reed Gallery at the University of Cincinnati in OH; the Museum of Art at University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, MS; the Hiestand Galleries at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX; and at Women and Their Work gallery in Austin, TX. As of 2013, she is the Chair of the Department of Visual Studies at St. Edward's University in Austin, TX. Hammonds teaches courses in drawing, public art, and the graphic novel. "... she is serving as an Associate Dean of Humanities, too." Hammonds was appointed as one of the seven-member Art in Public Places panel for Austin, TX.

Before 2011, Hammonds worked in a manner that was less personal. The art work that occurred prior was about consumerist culture. Her current work is autobiographical. Hammonds states "My works are filled with a variety of images, from mundane objects to precious artifacts, assembled, collected and collaged together through drawings and installations. The works themselves act as evidence, whether that be evidence of personal memories or broader events affecting larger communities. No matter what form the work takes, there are threads of memory intertwined with a sort of collective consciousness. My goal when combining a variety of images or junk picked up on street corners, is to create some scene that feels real to me, something that conjures and feels as close to my own memories as possible."

Hollis Hammonds was born in Independence, Kentucky. Hammonds received her MFA from the University of Cincinnati in 2001, and her BFA in drawing from Northern Kentucky University in 1998. She is married to graphic designer Oen Hammonds.

On March 29, 1986, a week after Hammonds' fifteenth birthday, her childhood home caught fire. She and her family members emerged from their trailer home in northern Kentucky unharmed. "As traumatic and devastating as it was, Hammonds remembers the rather surreal calm that emerged as they waited for the firetrucks to come from the other side of the county." In her work, Hammonds has used the structure of home as a metaphor for the structure of memory.