Holly Schmidt, “Breath”

Fingers wistfully trace out the details of a Norwegian landscape in the condensation on a window. The condensation obscures the view at first, slowly dissipating to reveal the landscape to the camera, but the landscapes do not line up.

“In Breath, the glass window is a device that removes me from the natural landscape. It creates two planes, inside and outside, and becomes an opening to another reality. I am positioned within that liminal space. Tracing the landscape in the condensation serves to reveal my act of perceiving and the ephemeral quality of perception. As I trace, the viewer becomes aware that the image of the land as I see it is not the same as the image of the land that they see. Our perception is different. The viewer is situated in neither realm; they are neither here nor there. They are both invited inside the action and then reminded that they are outside of the action. The viewer shares in my sense of displacement.” – Holly Schmidt

Holly Schmidt is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation, photography, and video. She currently resides in Calgary, AB and maintains a studio with the Untitled Art Society. Schmidt’s practice focuses on memory and perception. In 2004, she continued her exploration of these concepts through an Artist Residency at the USF Verftet in Bergen, Norway. She has shown locally and internationally, including the Herland Film Festival and Emmedia, Calgary, and the Visningrommet, Bergen, Norway. She is currently the Curator of Education and Interpretation at the Glenbow Museum.

About this series:
The Interior—that which lies between, the domestic, the inner life, the indoors, the inland country, a closed circuit, the inner sanctum…

In Canada, the Interior refers to the hinterland, sparsely populated resource-rich lands stretching out to the north of distant southern cities, typically described by outsiders as a ‘frontier’. Despite a southern population huddling mostly along the Canada-U.S. border, the soul of Canada is often said to be its north. With this loosely in mind, I put out an open call for submissions for videos that responded to 'the Interior.' Despite the subtle reference to Canadian geography, I wasn’t looking for fist-pumping Canadian nationalism.

In this series, six artists explore the Interior as an idea, a vast terra incognita stretching out across the land, the body, and the mind, a swath of territory defined apart, but intrinsic to the whole. Touching on both the literal and the poetic, these videos take me inwards.
Mark Prier.