Holly Hughes (performance artist)
| Holly Hughes | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 10, 1955 Saginaw, Michigan |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Kalamazoo College |
| Information | |
| Notable work(s) | Well of Horniness (1983), Clit Notes (1996) |
| Awards | 7 grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Obie Award and Lambda Book Award |
Holly Hughes (born March 10, 1955) is an American lesbian performance artist.
She began as a feminist painter in New York City but is best known for her connection with the NEA Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women's One World Cafe. Her plays explore sexuality, body images and the female mind. She is the recipient of several awards including the Lambda Book Award and an Obie Award. She teaches fine arts at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design.
Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Hughes graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1977 and moved to New York City two years later to become a feminist painter. She worked as a waitress to support herself but felt unfulfilled, later writing: "Why had I moved to New York City to live in an even crummier apartment and do the same things that I was doing in Kalamazoo?" She saw a poster promoting a "Double X-rated Christmas party" to be held in the basement of a Catholic church. There she found lesbian women stripping, kissing booths, and a highly sexual atmosphere. She eagerly attended many such parties, became involved with the group and began doing theater with them because "that's what they were doing". Hughes' first performance at the Women's One World Cafe (Wow Cafe) in the early 1980s was a piece called "My Life as a Glamour Don't", about various fashion mistakes. She followed this up with "Shrimp in a Basket" and then her breakthrough Well of Horniness (1983). At the WOW Cafe, Hughes felt that she was able to "tell the stories she so desperately wanted to be told as a child."
Hughes wrote, directed and performed in Dress Suits to Hire (1987). Critic Stephen Holden commented, in reviewing the play, "While Ms. Hughes's more poetic writing recalls Sam Shepard, the campy B-movie side of her sensibility shows her to be equally in tune with John Waters's movies and Charles Busch's drag extravaganzas." Focusing on the subjects of sexuality, masturbation and Jesus, her plays usually explore issues that she confronted as a young woman in college. In 1990 Hughes earned national attention as one of the so-called NEA Four, artists whose funding from the National Endowment for the Arts ("NEA") was vetoed.
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