Globe Article on Steve Hollinger's Show

Steve Hollinger's "What Left" show got a great writeup in the Globe (see below). It's currently at the Chase Gallery and runs through Saturday.


'Left' to his own devices
As an inventor and a sculptor, Steve Hollinger is constantly experimenting to feed his curiosity

Steve Hollinger's studio in Fort Point Channel is filled with strange treasures. There's a two-headed bird with three eyes and two beaks, stowed in a glass jar. There are antique hypodermic needles, a crocodile skull, magic lanterns, and an old aluminum prosthetic leg, polished to gleam. On one shelf, there's a 3-inch-tall house that Hollinger made out of spider webs, still intact after four years.

A soft-spoken, bearded man who pads barefoot through the light-infused space, Hollinger is more than a collector of odd items. He's an inventor and artist whose unusual sculptures - many of them kinetic and powered by solar cells - are on view in the solo exhibit "What's Left" at Chase Gallery through Sept. 27.

As an artist, Hollinger, 45, conducts experiments for his own delectation. "You're surprised by the outcome," he says. "I make an experiment, tapping into a certain feeling, and see if this thing captures or houses that certain feeling."

At Chase Gallery, many of those experiments hinge on life's fragility. "Heart #4" is an astonishing assemblage of glass tubes and vessels with blue liquid pumping through them, powered by the sun. "Skeleton Leaf Boxes" consists of translucent boxes that are indeed made out of delicate leaf skeletons, and "Born on the Drop of Truckee" is a living-room tableau in an old wooden explosives box, with a solar-powered mini TV brightly broadcasting images of atomic-bomb tests.

Read full article on the Globe's site.