A&E

What inspires muralist, enamel pinmaker and wedding minister Holly Vaughn?

Image
Holly with her Vesta mural and her Battle Born pins.

There’s a chance you’re wearing a piece of Holly Vaughn’s art right now. The creative head of Battle Born Pins (bbpins.bigcartel.com)has produced dozens of fun, stylish enamel pins. (My personal favorite is a grammar-police pin that simply says “*You’re.”) She’s also a certified minister (helping Flora Pop’s Victoria Hogan conduct offbeat pop-up weddings) and a prolific muralist (her latest, in collaboration with Mallory Dawn, is on a exterior wall of the Jardin dispensary). Here’s what sparks this restless creative mind.

Who are your biggest formative influences? Probably the most honest answer is that my earliest influence was Polly Pocket [dolls]. They taught me how interesting scale can be. When you take something and shrink it down, or blow it up to massive size as [Claes] Oldenburg would do, it becomes precious either way. I also really love James Turrell.

Which local artists do you admire? My absolute favorite—and I hope I don’t offend anyone; I have a lot of friends in the art scene here—is an illustrator, Zet Gold. She just moved but I consider her a local; she went to UNLV. She never stops creating, and I love how fearless she is in making really weird stuff that’s executed really well. She’ll draw a little talking Jell-O (laughs)—stuff that’s whimsical, romantic and at times a little sad. I’m sometimes jealous of how much she creates without any judgment of herself.

What’s your favorite music to create by? My favorite band right now is Jungle. Their music videos are incredible, and their choreography just breaks my heart. But when I wanna feel pumped up about Vegas—whenever I’m feeling down, because they just took down the Holiday Motel sign—I’ll listen to The Killers and Elvis, because they’re both nostalgic and hopeful.

What are you reading right now? I pretty much always have a copy of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles handy. The Mars landscape [of that book]—I feel like we’re living in it, like it’s the story of my hometown. (Interviewer’s note: There followed a full 10 minutes of the two of us geeking out over Bradbury’s imagery and metaphors.)

Can you recommend some other enamel pin makers that you like? I’d love to plug Mid Mod Pin. It’s like porn for midcentury fanatics (laughs). I also really like Pin Museum. They’ll take a Monet and make it Polly Pocket-sized. And one more brand called Strike Gently. They just do cool, weird sh*t.

Finally, what does Vegas’ cultural scene need that it doesn’t have? A lot of our wedding clients have a real interest in vintage Vegas. My utopian dream is to reopen the motels of Fremont Street, as motels—to turn Downtown into Palm Springs 2.0. There’s a real interest in the old side of Vegas, and we’re not utilizing it.

Share
Photo of Geoff Carter

Geoff Carter

Experts in paleoanthropology believe that Geoff Carter began his career in journalism sometime in the early Grunge period, when he ...

Get more Geoff Carter
Top of Story