Colleen Wolstenholme facts for kids

Colleen Wolstenholme (born May 31, 1963) is a Canadian sculptor and artist. While she is best known for her sculptures, she also creates art using collage, drawing, jewellery, painting, and video.

Wolstenholme's early art explores the connection between women and medicine. Her more recent work looks at themes like the human brain and how we move. She uses her art to make people think about important topics in our world.

Life and Art Career

Colleen Wolstenholme was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in 1963. She studied art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD). In 1987, she moved to New York City, where she saw many different kinds of art that inspired her.

She later returned to school to study jewellery making. After graduating, she worked for the Dia Art Foundation, helping to set up art exhibits.

Art That Makes You Think

In the mid-1990s, Wolstenholme created powerful artworks about women's health. One piece, called Patience (1996), was a seven-foot-tall padded room shaped like a pentagon. These works explored how society has sometimes tried to control women's emotions and reactions.

Wolstenholme became famous for making jewellery shaped like pills. She created charms and accessories that looked exactly like different kinds of medicines, such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills.

In 1997, her friend, the singer Sarah McLachlan, invited her to sell this jewellery at the Lilith Fair music festival. This brought Wolstenholme a lot of attention. Some medicine companies were unhappy that she used the shapes of their trademarked pills and threatened to sue her. In the end, no lawsuits were filed. Wolstenholme continued to make art that started conversations about health and medicine.

Exploring New Ideas

After 1999, Wolstenholme moved back to Nova Scotia. She began creating very large sculptures of pills, including Valium and Xanax. These huge sculptures continued her exploration of how medicines are used in society, especially in relation to women's health.

In the 2000s, her art shifted to look at clothing and the female body. She created sculptures and paintings that featured burqas and camouflage patterns. These pieces, like her Camouflesh series, examined how certain clothing can be seen as both protective and restrictive for women.

In 2002, Wolstenholme was nominated for the Sobey Art Award, a major prize for Canadian artists.

Recent Art and Teaching

In 2019, Wolstenholme earned her PhD from York University. In the same year, she became an assistant professor of visual art at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

From 2022 to 2024, she created a series called In the Deep Blue Sea. This collection includes paintings, drawings, and sculptures of deep-sea creatures like octopuses and jellyfish. Wolstenholme said this work reflects the feeling of isolation she felt during the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing it to the quiet loneliness of the deep ocean.

Where to See Her Work

Colleen Wolstenholme's art is featured in the collections of major Canadian museums. You can find her work at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Confederation Centre for the Arts, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Gallery of Canada.