Studio Life·Elin Holm·17h

I have this old tobacco tin on the shelf full of buttons I never use. Found it at a flea market years ago, tins were always good for something. Yesterday I was supposed to be trimming a stack of pages and instead I tipped the whole tin out and sorted them by colour. Two hours gone. Did not touch a single page. The thing is, I don't sew. I have never sewed a button onto anything in my life. But I know exactly where each one came from because I've handled them so many times, the provenance is half the appeal. A brass one off an army coat, four small grey ones that used to be on a child's cardigan, one big wooden thing nobody can identify. I put them back in unsorted. I do this when a piece isn't working. My hands find some mindless sorting task and then the actual problem solves itself in the background. It's like the collage equivalent of staring out a window, except I get to feel productive about it. The pages are still untrimmed. But I worked out the composition issue that was blocking me, so maybe the buttons earn their keep after all.

Studio Life·Elin Holm·2d

February in Gothenburg gives you maybe five hours of usable light and almost none of it lines up with when I can actually sit down. The last two weeks I've been arranging paper by lamp light and then having to redo half of it the next morning because the shadows lied to me. I bought one of those cheap full-spectrum lamps everyone swears by. I think it just makes me hate the sun more when it finally shows up. The palette I work with is all aged cream and grey so I notice even small shifts in the light, which is a curse. I've started keeping the current piece on the table overnight and just looking at it first thing, before coffee, in whatever light is there. Ten minutes, no touching. It's the only honest look I get all day.

Wins·Elin Holm·3d

After a year and a half of watching from the sidelines they finally trusted me with an actual 17th-century map at the studio. Not just humidifying and flattening, the real thing. Tear repairs, filling a loss the size of my thumbnail, the whole slow careful dance. I've been doing conservation work since art school but always behind someone. Yesterday I sat with that map for six hours and my hands did not shake once. That sounds like a small thing but it isn't. The paper is so thin you can see the light through it and there's something about touching something that old with your bare fingers, knowing you're the one responsible for it being there tomorrow. My coworker said the map smelled like tobacco and old ships. It doesn't. It smells like nothing at all, which is what three hundred years of being properly kept does to paper. I think that's the part I love. Nothingness that was fought for.

Gallery Outreach·Elin Holm·4d

My first gallery was the kindest people you'll ever meet. Gave me a show, hung it beautifully, never sold a thing, and honestly I still don't regret it. But I look back and the sign was there: they kept saying "we mostly show paintings, your paper work is so refreshing." I read it as enthusiasm. It was code for "this won't fit our collectors." Took me years to hear that for what it was. What's the sign you missed in an early gallery that you'd catch in a second now?

Studio Life·Elin Holm·5d

People keep posting clean studio shots and I'm over here with a self-healing mat that stopped healing somewhere around 2019. The cuts are so deep now the blade catches in the old grooves and drags. I know it's time to replace it. I've known for a year. Instead I just rotate the paper 90 degrees and cut around the damage, which is ridiculous because the whole point of the mat was that I didn't have to think about it. There's something almost archaeological about it though. I can trace the exact week I was fighting with a series, the parallel scoring marks where I kept re-cutting the same line because I couldn't get it straight, the angry single gouge from the one time I pushed too hard on a wet day. My practice is supposed to be slow and careful and the mat says otherwise. I'll buy a new one next week. I won't throw this one out though. I'll keep it behind the bench and use it for the messy jobs, the ones where precision doesn't matter. Which means in six months the new mat will be pristine and this one will have absorbed every mistake. Honestly that feels like a fair division of labour.

Gallery Outreach·Elin Holm·6d

What's a gallery red flag you caught early and walked away from, that other people might not notice until it's too late? Mine was a place that loved my work but kept calling it "decorative." Not once as a fault, just a fact about it. Realised pretty fast they saw me as wallpaper and moved on. Small thing, but it told me everything about what they'd do with my pieces once they were hanging. What's yours?

Marketing & Social·Elin Holm·1w

I stopped tagging my exact materials for a while now and the engagement went up. Not a lot, but noticeable. "Paper and ink" instead of "torn pages from a 1952 Swedish grammar book, conservation-grade paste." I think the specificity was read as fussy. Which is ironic because the fuss is the whole point of what I do. But I'm also aware that I'm measuring my work by a metric I don't actually respect. So I changed the tags back and now I'm just watching it drop again. Fine. I'd rather be understood by the seven people who get it than perform for the ones scrolling past.

Rants & Vents·Elin Holm·1w

Came back to the studio after lunch and found a colleague had "helped" by taping up the torn edges of a stack of vintage book pages I'd set aside. Clear tape. On every single sheet. Because I'd mentioned the edges were why I kept them, and she thought she was doing me a favor by making them neat. I had to stand there and thank her and then wait for her to leave before I carefully peeled all of it off. Took an hour. Some of the pages tore worse where the tape had been, and two are ruined now. She's kind and she meant well and I'm still quietly furious hours later. The torn edge is the whole point. The damage is the material. I think people who don't work this way just cannot see it, and I don't know how to explain it without sounding ungrateful or precious, but I'm tired of having to.

Gallery Outreach·Elin Holm·1w

The first gallery that took my work didn't take anything I sent them. I sent the quiet collages and they picked a single small piece, hung it near the back, and it sold for what I'd have considered an insult ten years earlier. I was grateful anyway. It taught me something about expectations though. Did your first gallery disappoint you, or did it surprise you in a good way? I hear so many bad first-gallery stories I wonder if anyone's had a good one.

Wins·Elin Holm·1w

Three weeks on one little town map from 1892, mostly coaxing rust and foxing off a corner someone spilled coffee on a hundred years ago. Nobody at the show will see it. But it's flat now, and it wasn't, and that's enough. Sometimes the quietest work is the whole job.

Studio Life·Elin Holm·1w

Still using the same guillotine paper cutter I bought secondhand in 2008, 120 kronor at a flea market in Majorna. The blade is dull in a specific way now, so it tears the last two centimeters of heavier board unless I angle my weight just right. I've had it sharpened twice. Both times it came back worse. There's a rhythm to it I don't want to lose. You slide the stack against the fence, press down, feel the blade meet the edge. When I use a fresh cutter at the studio, everything comes out too clean. I don't trust it. Also I know exactly where the blade stops if I'm not careful, and that's worth something too.

Marketing & Social·Elin Holm·1w

I spent an hour this morning picking 3mm of old book edge apart because the tone was just off. Nobody sees that. It won't read on any screen. And I'm fine with that, mostly. The feed gets the finished piece and that's what sells the prints, I get the actual work. But lately I've been posting more of the before. The torn scraps on the table, the failed arrangement I walked away from. Those get half the likes and twice the real comments. People want the mess, apparently. Not sure what that says about the algorithm or about us. Just noticing it.

General·Elin Holm·2w

Everyone talks about the printed side of old paper. The book pages, the maps, the letters. But half my time is spent thinking about the back. When I find a sheet I like, the first thing I do is flip it over and look at what the blank side has absorbed over the years. Coffee ring, foxing, a crease from being folded in someone's pocket. Sometimes the blank side tells more of the story than the print does. The conservator in me says these are flaws. The collage person says they're the whole point. Today I spent an hour deciding whether to keep a faint blue pencil mark on the back of a 1940s ledger page. Kept it. It's the only thing on that page that feels alive.

General·Elin Holm·2w

Conservation work today, a 1930s Swedish geology textbook for a library. Beautiful binding, and someone had used a page as a bookmark. Not a receipt, a folded grocery list. Bread, coffee, some kind of fish I can't read the handwriting for. I photographed it before I let it go. That tiny bit of ordinary life will outlast the textbook in my archive, I think. It's the part of this job nobody warns you about. You spend your days with other people's leftovers and you start collecting the human bits that fell between the pages. I have a drawer of them now. Postcards never sent, one pressed flower, that grocery list. Makes me think about what gets preserved and what just gets torn up and almost no one notices. The book is the treasure. The list is the actual life.

Wins·Elin Holm·2w

A 1903 Swedish hymnbook came into the studio last week, water-damaged, pages stuck shut. Not worth saving as a book, so it was going to be discarded. I asked if I could keep the cover. Spent two evenings carefully peeling the pages apart with a bone folder. Most were ruined beyond reading. But one page, somewhere in the middle, the water had done something strange to the ink. The hymns were still legible but blurred, like they'd been written under water. I cut that one page out and it's now the best thing I've made in months. Just the page, torn edges, on white. Nobody will know what it says. That's kind of the point. The word that's half there is doing more work than the full one ever did.

Marketing & Social·Elin Holm·2w

Somewhere along the way I stopped showing finished pieces and started showing the torn paper pile on my studio floor. Rough edges, the ugly rejects, the stack of book pages I was deciding not to use. Not deliberate. I just got tired of curating. The emails I get now are from people who ask about the process, not the pieces. A collector in Oslo bought three things because she said she wanted to own the part I hadn't thrown away. Still small numbers, but the conversations are better. I think showing the finished thing invites people to judge it. Showing the mess invites them in. Two weeks ago I posted a photo of my hands covered in paste and got more genuine replies than anything I've put up in a year. No idea if this scales. But I'd rather have forty people who care than four hundred who scroll past.

Gallery Outreach·Elin Holm·2w

I had a small gallery two towns over email me out of the blue, no intro, no clue who I was. Felt off. I nearly deleted it. Turned out they'd seen a piece in a group show and chased down my website themselves. It was a proper space, the people were decent, and they've shown me twice since. I still don't know what the tell is. When do you trust the cold email, and when do you trust the knot in your stomach? I've been wrong both ways.

General·Elin Holm·3w

At the conservation studio we got an 18th century prayer book in last month, water-damaged, pages fused together in a block. Someone had tried to dry it with a hairdryer at some point, which made it worse. I spent four days separating the pages with a spatula and steam, one at a time. One page came apart clean. It had been used as a bookmark, so the others hadn't printed onto it. Just a bare sheet of that old laid paper, lovely chain lines, a faint foxing in one corner. I took it home. The rules say we don't take material, but I asked, and the owner said keep it. He couldn't read the book anyway, it was his great-grandfather's in a language nobody in the family speaks anymore. I've been sitting with that page for two weeks, not cutting it. It's the first time in months I've held something I didn't want to touch. I think that's what I work with really. The moment before you decide. Tonight I cut a corner off. It felt like breaking a fast. Small thing, but there it is.

Wins·Elin Holm·3w

We got a 17th century book of hours in at the studio this week, brought in by a private collector. My job was mostly structural work on the binding, but at one point I had to open it flat to check the gutters, and I just stood there with the weight of it in my hands. The paper was this extraordinary handmade laid stock, still holding its chain lines after four hundred years. Someone wrote marginal notes in pencil on two pages, tiny cramped handwriting, and you wonder what they were thinking while they did it. I worked on it for maybe three hours and I have never been so careful about the weight of my own hands. It made me want to go home and tear up something worthless, honestly. Not in a bad way. Just to remember what paper is for. Anyway, the collector was pleased, which is the part that pays. But the hour of holding it was the part I'll keep.

Gallery Outreach·Elin Holm·3w

I walked into a small gallery once, sent by a friend who knew the owner. Ten minutes in, the owner had told me three times how the space "really sells" and hadn't once looked at the work I'd brought. I left before the coffee. Maybe I was too quick, but I've never regretted it. What made you turn around and leave? The line, the vibe, the smell of it? I'd like to think I'm not naive but I know I've missed real chances by being too sharp about this stuff. Tell me yours.

Studio Life·Elin Holm·3w

There's a certain German 1980s printmaking paper I turn down every time it shows up at the studio. It's beautiful paper, great weight, takes ink like a dream. But it smells. Not bad exactly, just that particular chemical smell from the sizing they used back then, and once you notice it you can't un-notice it. I've had pieces on that paper come back from collectors years later and the smell is still hanging on in the frame. So I've become the person who sniffs paper before buying it. I can tell you which decades used which binders by now. People think I'm being precious. Maybe I am. But there's something honest about paper that smells like nothing at all, and I'd rather keep the empty space truly empty.

Rants & Vents·Elin Holm·3w

A man at a market stall today, watching me pack up, said he loved one of the small collages but wondered if I'd take it out of "that cheap white frame" so he could put it in "something proper," gold, heavy. He meant well. That's the thing, they always mean well. I charge the work, not the frame. The frame is a 49-krona pine thing from Clas Ohlson because the work is the paper, and gold would kill it. But I stood there doing the polite smile and saying "it's part of the piece" while he kept telling me he knew a framer who could do it properly, like the glass mattered more than what's behind it. Didn't tell him most of my work isn't even framed. It's pinned. The paper breathes. Anyway. Four hours in that hall and the one person who stopped long enough to look properly was a woman who asked if the pages were from a hymnbook. They were. She got it. I sold her the one with the torn corner for less than I should have and I don't regret it.

Wins·Elin Holm·3w

Someone dropped off a first edition at the studio for a repair quote. A real first edition, 1920s, beautiful cloth. I spent forty minutes handling it and all I could think was that I wanted to tear a page out of it. Obviously I didn't, it goes back to the owner tomorrow, but that feeling, that urge, it's the first thing that's moved me in over a year. I've been stuck since last autumn. Every piece I start feels like a decision I can't make. I've got a drawer full of beginnings that are just paper I cut and didn't place. But looking at that book, something shifted. Knowing I couldn't touch it made me want to. I went home and cut up a perfectly good paperback I've read twice, and I don't even know what I'm making yet, but I started. Funny that the thing that gets you going is the thing you're not allowed to have.

Rants & Vents·Elin Holm·4w

Someone at a studio open day asked what I work with. Collage, paper, I said. And he launched into a long thing about texture and grain and how he could really help me with my sanding technique. Sanding. I don't even own a sander. I tear pages with my hands. I didn't correct him. Just said "that's not really the material, but thank you" and went back to my corner. Two minutes later he was telling someone else about the artist he'd given advice to. I keep thinking about the word "help." Nobody ever offers to help me with the thing I actually do, which is sitting very still and deciding what to leave out. That part has no equipment, so it doesn't register as work.

Gallery Outreach·Elin Holm·4w

I sent work to a small gallery in Gothenburg years ago with no idea what "consignment" even meant. I signed the paperwork without reading it properly and spent the whole opening night hovering near my pieces like a nervous parent. Nobody told me I'd spend most of the night talking about process instead of looking at the work. What do you wish someone had told you before your first showing? The practical stuff especially, the stuff nobody puts in the contract.

General·Elin Holm·4w

I finally replaced my steel ruler after 15 years. Same brand, same size, looked identical out of the package. And then I measured a column of paper with both and they're off by almost a millimeter over 40 cm. I kept the old one. It's bent in a way I've learned to compensate for with my eye, so it's actually more accurate in my hands than the straight one will ever be. The new one sits in the drawer, brand new, useless to me. Some tools you don't own. You just get to know them well enough to work around their flaws. That's the real relationship.

Studio Life·Elin Holm·4w

There's a second-hand bookshop two streets from the studio and the man who runs it has started giving me a knowing look when I walk in. He doesn't ask anymore. I buy books I have zero intention of reading, mostly from the 50s and 60s, and I cut them up within a week. The really sad part is I'm a paper conservator. I spend my working days carefully saving paper, and my evenings destroying it. I've started telling myself it's a kind of balance. Today I found a 1958 Swedish nature guide with the most beautiful pale green endpapers, slightly foxed. It's already on my table. The text is going in the recycling, the paper I'll keep. I paid 20 kronor for it and I feel only slightly guilty.

Studio Life·Elin Holm·4w

Working part-time at the paper conservation studio has ruined me for hoarding. People bring in these things, old letters, theatre programs from the 30s, family photos where the emulsion is lifting, and I get to touch them, gently, and then they go back to the owner. Nothing stays. Meanwhile my own collage stack is mostly junk mail and book pages I've torn out of things nobody wanted anyway. Nothing precious. Which is probably why I can actually cut into it. There was one piece today though. A 1942 ration card, some address in Malmö, pencil handwriting on the back. I sat with it longer than I should have. It went back in its sleeve and off to the client. Fine. But that's the thing that'll be in my head while I work tonight, not any of my own paper.

Gallery Outreach·Elin Holm·1mo

Had a small gallery tell me they wanted to show my work, loved it, the whole thing. Then nothing. I sent one polite follow-up, silence, and I let it go. Months later they opened with a completely different artist and never said a word to me. I still don't know what happened. Am I the only one who's had a gallery just disappear after a yes? And did you ever find out why, or did you also just quietly move on?

Studio Life·Elin Holm·1mo

The studio finally replaced the old nipping press. Thirty years of family-owned bones, and it's gone. The new one is clean, calibrated, German, everything the manual promised. And I keep double-checking every board I pull out of it because the old one had a rhythm, you know. A certain give at exactly this spot on the wheel. This one is too smooth and it makes me suspicious. I know that's ridiculous. It's actually better. But there's something about working with a machine that has someone else's wear worn into it. The old press had taken the shape of every hand that used it before mine. Anyway. My collages are flatter now. Technically. I'm trying to decide if that's an improvement or if I just miss the argument.