The Cherokee County Arts Council presents [[[holdingpattern]]], a June exhibition by Kyle Cottier, an interdisciplinary artist based in Knoxville, TN.

Cottier works primarily in wood and photography, building sculptural forms from thousands of small parts woven into larger structures. The process is one of repetition, weaving, and mending. The results are porous and latticed, often suspended in tension, holding their shape piece by piece.

Basketry and vessel-making are central to the work. Cottier turns to these traditions for their long histories of containment, care, and survival, and for the way they tie form to thought. The vessel returns again and again as a symbol of autonomy through craft. Its value, in Cottier's words, lies not only in its emptiness, but in its potential to hold something meaningful.

The sculptures often gather around a central emptiness and live in the space between ruin and repair. Memory shows up in the work as something physical and provisional, shaped as much by absence as by presence. Cottier is drawn to the connections between the organic and synthetic, body and landscape, online and offline. These are handmade forms that honor the labor of making while asking what materiality means in a digitized world.

Cottier holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. They have been an Artist in Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and at Stove Works in Chattanooga. Their work has been shown at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia, Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, and Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, and featured in Sculpture Magazine. They are a recent recipient of a CERF+ Get Ready Grant.

Join us for the opening reception on
Friday, June 5, at 5:30 p.m. in the CCAC Center Gallery.
Opening Reception: Friday, June 5, 5:30 p.m.
Location: CCAC, 33 Valley River Avenue, Murphy, NC
Admission: Free and open to the public

We are grateful to Graciela Laurent Photography for sponsoring this June Center Gallery exhibition. Business sponsors help us strengthen our exhibitions, support public arts programming, and build meaningful community participation in the arts.