Art by Holly Garvin
As a former hydrographer for the U.S. Navy, Holly Garvin has made a career thinking about what lies beneath the surface of water bodies. She uses sonar to produce high resolution images of the seafloor that are used to create nautical charts, which aid in the safety of navigation for the Navy, recreational boaters, mariners in the shipping industry, and the Department of Defense’s military operations.
As an artist, she reaches into those very waters herself, and shares what she discovers beneath through marine-inspired artwork often utilizing the Japanese printing technique of Gyotaku (pronounced Gee-oh-tak-oo) to memorialize the fish she catches in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.
Garvin’s fascination with underwater worlds began when she was a little girl growing up on a small island, only accessible by boat, between Michigan and Canada. There, life revolved around fishing and boating.
Art by Holly Garvin
“My mom was an artist, so the time my sister and I spent with her was spent doing creative, artsy things,” she said. “My dad owned a bait shop on the shore of Lake St. Clair. My job as a little girl was to stand on a stack of milk crates and fish the dead minnows out of the fish tank. I’d sink my arm all the way in, let the minnows swim across it, and imagine I was living among them.”
Canada was so close Garvin says she could hear music from the mainland. A highlight of each day was the arrival of ships just feet from her back door on the St. Clair River. “Because the shipping channel bottlenecked right in front of our house, every hour or two, these thousand-foot-plus ships passed so close I could stand in my yard, wave to the crew, and see them waving back,” Garvin said. “As a little girl, I was convinced the best life and the best adventures were on those ships.”
When it came time to select a college major, Garvin wasn’t ready to leave the water. She chose to study marine science at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina, a degree she says encompasses marine biology, marine geology, marine chemistry, and marine physics. She was quickly recruited by the Navy, which sent her to the University of Southern Mississippi for her hydrography training.
Art by Holly Garvin
Over the next fifteen years, Garvin squeezed in time for her artwork between deployment on one naval vessel or another, living out of a suitcase for much of the year. Happily, with advancements in technology, she’s now transitioned into remote work. “I’m still a hydrographer, but I’m able to map remotely on my laptop,” Garvin said. “So, I can be home in my PJs doing the same job I did on a ship in the middle of the ocean.”
That “home” is actually encompassed by two small cottages over 1,000 miles from each other, one back in Michigan and one on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Garvin has a boat at each and conducts much of her creative process right on the water. Typically, this includes catching a fish, covering it in ink, printing it, cleaning it off (the ink is non-toxic), and eating it for dinner.
“I love the idea of combining boating, science, water, and fish—all the things I care about in one piece of art.” —Holly Garvin
Gyotaku, or “fish rubbing,” began in the 19th century as a way for Japanese fisherman to record their catches for bragging rights or simple documentation. Over time, what started as simple record keeping developed into an artform. The process Garvin and other Gyotaku artists employ involves coating a fish or other sea creature with sumi ink. Garvin sometimes creates temporary structures to support the fish in the position she wants, splaying out its fins. Then, she carefully lays rice paper on top of the sea creature, delicately pressing the paper with her hands until it records the fish in detail, down to the tiniest scale. Next, she paints in the eyes and sometimes adds underwater details. When she’s in Mississippi, Garvin specializes in printing regional saltwater fish such as redfish and sea bass. In Michigan, she records freshwater fish such as walleye or pike. Many times, she’s even printed octopus.
Art by Holly Garvin
While Gyotaku is traditionally restricted to black ink on white rice paper, Garvin has found ways to “funk it up,” incorporating other colors and materials including collage and sparkly elements inspired by the fishing lures that hung ceiling to floor in her family’s bait shop. She often merges her two passions, the science of hydrography and the art of Gyotaku, by applying her fish rubbings directly onto her nautical charts. “I might catch a fish in a certain spot, then print it on a chart of that location,” she said. “I love the idea of combining boating, science, water, and fish—all the things I care about in one piece of art.”
Garvin also accepts commissions, such as one from the owners of a Rhode Island sushi restaurant who recently shipped her a dozen fish common to their region to print and frame. “I love to paint pictures of someone’s fishing boat on a map of their favorite fishing spot,” she said. Another commissioned piece depicts every naval vessel on which a certain sailor served, printed onto a nautical chart that was meaningful to them. Another commission was for a retiring Louisiana tugboat captain, a rendering of his tug with the names of his grandchildren on its tires.
Courtesy of Holly Garvin
The Gyotaku process of hydrographer and artist Holly Garvin
After her father died, Garvin studied the GPS from his boat and painted it on a nautical chart of Lake Saint Claire, the lake they had grown up on, then used colorful thread to track navigation lines of his frequent routes.
On any given day, Garvin may answer a knock at her door and find a fisherman with an ice chest of fish they’ve caught and would like her to print. Or she’ll receive a package of fish packed in dry ice and shipped from another state. Her newest art experiment involves fish she buried in the backyard, whose bones she hopes to cobble into artwork. “I’m thinking about fishbone mobiles, but we’ll have to see where it takes me,” she said.
Whether she’s creating traditional Gyotaku prints, painting a marine-inspired mural, memorializing the life and adventures of a specific fisherman, or mapping the ocean floor, the mysteries of the deep are never far from Holly Garvin’s mind.
Garvin’s work can be seen at her studio space on the third floor of The Shops of Century Hall in Bay St. Louis and at pop-ups around Coastal Mississippi, as well as on her Instagram @mermaiding_mediums.
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