Ceramic, mixed media
For most of her adult life, Karla Holland-Scholer has kept a dream journal, using it as a source of inspiration and self-reflection. Her work is a union of her waking personal mythology and the imagery of her nightly dreams. Employing the theater—or more aptly, the stage—as a recurring metaphor for the human experience, she creates narrative works that invite viewers into worlds where memory, folklore, and the subconscious intersect. Working primarily in clay and oil, she also incorporates a variety of materials when they enhance the narrative or create unique visual effects.
Holland-Scholer is an artist and educator whose career has included teaching studio art at California State University, Sacramento; San Jose State University; and the University of California, Davis. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. She was represented by Koplin Gallery in Santa Monica for fifteen years, and her artwork is included in private and public collections, including the Kamm Teapot Foundation.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts with honors in Studio Art Education from the University of California, Davis, a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Arts in Multimedia Education from California State University, Sacramento. While at UC Berkeley, she received a Graduate Research Grant, a Graduate Fellowship Grant, and the Mabel Tombs Award. Her artistic development was profoundly influenced by Joan Brown, Wayne Thiebaud, Cornelia Shulz, Ralph Johnson, Roland Petersen, and Bob Arneson.
I perceive my dreaming life as inseparable from my waking life and am drawn to the threshold between the two. Doorways, windows, and other liminal spaces recur throughout my paintings and sculptures, opening psychological passages between inner and outer worlds. My work explores the movement of images across thresholds—between dream and waking, sacred and ordinary, theater and lived experience.
The stage has long served as a central metaphor in my work. My paintings and sculptures function as intimate theatrical tableaux where I engage in active imagination, allowing dream imagery to unfold into a dialogue between the work, myself, and the viewer.
My process follows the dream wherever it leads. Drawing on science, history, literature, folklore, and mythology, I seek images with emotional and symbolic potency. By coaxing images across the threshold of the unconscious into tangible form, I hope to reawaken a sense of mystery, presence, and enchantment within everyday experience.
Website: karlahollandscholerart.com
