Meet Sam Harper Holding
This year we’re celebrating 10 years of Colonnade House and will be sitting down with 10 artists to hear all about their creative practices. From painters, illustrators, sculptors and more, each artist is just one of the many who have been a part of Colonnade House over the years.
To kick off our artist stories, we have Sam Harper Holding. Find out all about Sam and his work below.
Can you tell us a little about your art practice.
I just go to the beach everyday and look at pebbles and look at the sea and go and draw for a bit.
Pebble magic is the act of going to the beach and being mindful about what you’re looking at and what you’re hearing and touching, like pebbles. Drawing has kind of been my practice. Well, first of all, it was a way to cope with grief and now it’s just what I do. Just to deal with life and everyday and I just think it’s important.
Tell us about your favourite artwork.
It would probably have to be Keith Harring’s Subway drawings. I really like the videos of them because you can see how easily he does it. I think I took some inspiration from that.
What did exhibiting at Colonnade House lead to?
I feel like it’s led to lots of things, like doing workshops. I also had my first solo exhibition at the Newland Gallery at The Toad. I’ve just been doing lots of little strange things that I don’t think I would have been doing if I didn’t have the first Colonnade House exhibition that I did.
Technically the first one that I did was a sketchbook exhibition that was an open call, but that was before I lived in Worthin. I was at uni and just applied. But the first one I did was with Creative Waves.
Creative Waves also commissioned me to animate some children’s drawings that were done at workshops at schools. I needed to do sound for the film and needed money to get a recorder so I could record my friends and ask them weird questions as if they were animals. I applied for a small grant from the Adur & Worthing Trust, their Creative Commissions grant. That was the first time I’d written a funding application or done anything like that. It was quite a strange experience, but I felt like I got a lot out of it in terms of just knowledge about how things work.
Tell us about an artist you think we should know about.
People like Creative Waves and Lorna Allan and the people that work at Colonnade House. I just mean people that are the most important to Worthing. For doing what they do, but also helping other people do what they do as well.
You can watch our short video of Sam here. Don’t forget to keep an eye out on our socials as we begin to release the next videos over the coming weeks!