Nobody tells you you can be an artist
As an avid fan of Seattle’s music scene during the late 1990s and early 2000s, photographer Bootsy Holler, ‘92, created a portfolio of little-known bands who later defined a decade in music history.
She chronicled the formative years of artists such as Death Cab for Cutie, Fleet Foxes, Interpol, Modest Mouse, Gossip, Beck, Moby, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Foo Fighters.
“I was documenting my life,” Holler says. “The musicians, promoters and bouncers were my friends, and I went to see bands I enjoyed and places I could get in for free. I didn’t know I was in the middle of something new.”
Her book “MAKiNG iT: an intimate documentary of the seattle indie, rock & punk scene, 1992-2008” reflects on the second generation of Seattle’s music scene, as the world transitioned from celluloid to digital, grunge to indie.
The book also reflects Holler’s own transition from struggling student, to aspiring fashion designer to music photographer.
Holler always knew the way she learned and saw the world was different. “I was definitely an artist, I always have been,” Holler says, “I didn't learn the same way other people learned.”
Though her high school had the usual run of Advanced Placement courses, she took every art class she could - including wood shop and metal shop.
She grew up in the Richland area – a “government town” filled with biologists, physicists and engineers. Her dad was an engineer. “Everybody was really smart, but there was no emphasis on art,” she says. She was expected to go to college, and her older sister had gone to Western. So when she graduated from high school, Holler headed off to Bellingham, too.
Learning the ropes
Her first year at Western was tough. She enrolled in all the usual basic courses of a first-year student. She struggled with the classroom work and format. “In the ‘80s, nobody's helping you understand that you learn differently,” she says of her early education. “You’re just ‘not as smart’ as these other kids.”
But Holler came to Western with a superpower: a deep self-knowledge and confidence in her own idea of who she was. After scraping through her first year, she knew she needed a different plan.
When her sophomore term began, she declared as an art major so she could begin taking studio classes with hands-on learning – mixing classes where she was in her element with more academically typical fare. She ended up graduating with a BA in Studio Arts concentrating in fiber arts.
Her grandmother had sewn and designed clothes, imparting to Holler a knowledge and affection for textiles. She had asked for a sewing machine for a high school graduation gift. She even started a side hustle repairing fellow students’ favorite jeans.
“I read the fashion magazines,” Holler recalls. “I dreamed about being in New York and being a fashion designer, or doing something in textiles and design, because I was like, oh, this is my God-given gift.” She created an innovative thesis project where she designed and printed her own fabrics which she turned into wearable pieces, but she never exhibited her wares or moved into the world of fiber arts.
“I never really got there,” Holler says thinking of her fiber art study. “I probably could do it now, because my mind is open.” But she kept sewing and designing her way to Seattle. She wove leather into dresses, adding them to the other things she designed – like satin reversible pants. She bought a serger and dead stock fabric, making clothes with unfinished edges when the togs du jour were polos, khakis, and “really clean t-shirts.”
“I cut up all these old leather jackets into strips, tied them together, and then made myself a makeshift loom.”
She did do some fashion shows, and, although she had some personal satisfaction making original clothes in Seattle, there was no viable market for it.
“I realized I couldn't make a living selling my clothing,” she remembers. She was selling her designer pieces at Righteous Rags, a high-end curated thrift store. “That was a super cool place to go buy clothes, and I would see hipsters wearing my clothes.”
But ultimately, it was too much work for the return, and Holler pivoted to her camera.
Finding focus
Holler's obsession for photography started at the age of 7 when she was given 35mm box camera for Christmas. Her sister – three years older – also got a camera. “Anything my dad bought for my sister,” Holler says, “he would buy me, because I would get really upset as a kid.”
She had the box camera for a year or two and immediately thought, “I want a better one.” Her next camera was a pocket Olympus with an attachable flash. “I had that small pocket camera with me constantly.”
She shot family trips, get-togethers with friends, school events – documenting her life. Today she muses, “Should I make a book of growing up in the 80s?”
She worked as a waitress and bartender through college, and enjoyed the Bellingham music scene. Her favorite bands to come through town were Hammerbox and the Flaming Lips, but she was going for the entertainment, not to take pictures.
It wasn’t until she was in Seattle after graduating, when fashion wasn’t paying the bills, that she turned back to the camera.
When money was tight, Holler considered looking for traditional nine-to-fives or waitressing jobs. But instead spent her time finding that one photo job that would pay her 10 times what she could earn waiting tables. That’s where she trained her focus.
“I couldn't go home, I didn't have family backing me up, and I knew I didn't want to work a corporate job," she says. “I'd already done that stuff.”
In Seattle she kept going to music shows – ones she could get into with friends through the back in small venues booking bands that were the bellwethers of the nascent indie scene. Through her network of roommates and friends, she got to know the bands and venues and started getting work from bands needing photos, or local outlets that needed images – like The Stranger or the Seattle Weekly.
She shot the music scene, because those were the people around her doing fascinating, entertaining, novel things. They were her acquaintances and friends, all learning at the same time. The music scene was like a family. People helped each other out.
Punk, but make it beautiful
Growing up obsessed with fashion and reading fashion magazines hadn’t turned into a career in design, but it certainly did give Holler an eye. “Looking at all these fashion photos and magazines,” she says, “I didn't even know I was teaching myself.” Inspiration came from photographers like Annie Leibovitz classic portraiture.
The flaccid Seattle fashion scene played to her favor. She produced photo shoots for bands – clothing, hair, and make-up. As important, she was empathetic and caring. The musicians weren’t models, and they weren’t from the fashion industry. Holler built rapport with them, made them look and feel good, and that showed through the photos. “Everybody has these insecurities that come out,” she says, but she worked to draw out the beauty of the people she photographed. “It's not only in what you're wearing, but how you feel.”
She wanted her pictures to look cool without looking cheesy. Punk rock, but with class. “Everybody was doing their own thing,” she remembers. “How do I pull all those things together and make it a little bit like a fashion magazine image, or make it hip and clean in a way, but still feel relatable to the musician?”
Holler brought those creative questions to her new book MAKiNG iT published by Damiani.
“How do I make a book that's cool, and punk rock, and has some DIY, but at the same time is beautiful?”
Holler’s book is a tribute to the Seattle music of 1992-2008 as much as it is a tribute to her belief in herself as an artist, and her commitment to making art no matter what.
Chris Casquilho covers Western’s College of Fine and Performing Arts for University Communications. Email him story ideas at chris.casquilho@wwu.edu