Start with the story.
A traditional corporate art program purchases finished work. This idea starts inside Holmes Murphy — with the people, decisions, relationships and moments that already matter.
HOLMES MURPHY / 1932 → 2032
Make independence visible.
A proposal for an artist embedded inside Holmes Murphy to discover, create and preserve the stories that make independence meaningful.
94years built
06years to 100
02 / WHY NOW
THE CENTENNIAL HAS ALREADY BEGUN
Don't wait until 100
to tell the story.
A hundredth anniversary is normally approached by looking backward. Holmes Murphy has another option: begin six years early.
An artist could spend those years capturing the company while the next part of its history is actually being made — meeting the people, witnessing change, gathering stories and translating meaningful moments into permanent works of art.
By 2032, Holmes Murphy wouldn't simply unveil a centennial exhibit. It would already have created one.
1932
2032
03 / THE OPPORTUNITY
BEYOND CORPORATE ART
This isn't about
decorating offices.
Give meaning a form.
A client relationship. A mentor who changed a career. A difficult year. A community act. A risk avoided. A promise kept. The artist finds the meaning inside the story and gives it form.
Create a cultural asset.
Original work can remain in a building for decades, travel across offices, create conversation, support recruiting and brand storytelling, and become part of the company's permanent history.
04 / WHY HOLMES MURPHY
THE WORK IS OFTEN INVISIBLE
Trust is invisible.
So is protection. Confidence. Mentorship. Stewardship. Belonging. Independence.
Yet these are among the most important things Holmes Murphy creates. That presents an extraordinary opportunity for an artist: turn the invisible work of Holmes Murphy into something people can see, experience and remember.
Not literal illustrations of insurance. Art about what insurance, independence and human relationships make possible.
05 / THE ROLE
ARTIST + LISTENER + STORYTELLER + AMBASSADOR
One person.
A growing body of work.
The Corporate Artist & Brand Ambassador works alongside Marketing, leadership, the Holmes Murphy Foundation and employees throughout the enterprise.
01
Create
A continuing collection of original artwork — from intimate works to architectural-scale installations.
02
Listen
Interview employees, retirees, clients and community partners to find stories with lasting meaning.
03
Connect
Turn the creative process into meaningful internal, recruiting, social and public-facing brand experiences.
04
Preserve
Build a visual cultural archive that grows deliberately toward Holmes Murphy's 100th anniversary.
The goal isn't to make more content.
It is to create things worth creating content about.
06 / ART CONCEPTS
CONCEPTUALLY STRONG / PHYSICALLY BUILDABLE
Art with something
to say.
The visual language should be contemporary, architectural and restrained — work that rewards a second look rather than explaining itself in the first five seconds.
01 / INDEPENDENCE
The Unbroken Line
A monumental suspended sculpture for a Holmes Murphy gathering space. One physical line moves through the building, changing material, direction and tension as it encounters obstacles — yet never breaking.
Subtle markers represent important eras, but it never becomes a literal timeline. The final section is engineered to accept new segments on the road to 2032 and beyond.
Independence is not standing still. It is the freedom to choose a path — and keep going.
02 / STEWARDSHIP + PEOPLE
What We Carry Forward
Two substantial abstract forms approach one another from opposite directions. Between them passes one uninterrupted element — perhaps illuminated cast glass or polished metal.
Neither form owns what passes between them. One received it. One carries it forward. A physical expression of mentorship, employee ownership, succession and stewardship.
You do not inherit independence simply to possess it. You protect it long enough to give it to someone else.
03 / PEOPLE
What Matters
Employees throughout the enterprise answer one question: What do you protect? Each response becomes a physical tessera, fragment, word or image.
Up close, the viewer sees hundreds of separate human answers. From farther away, they resolve into one unified artwork.
Insurance protects things. People protect what those things mean.
04 / INSURANCE
The Space Between
A layered glass installation exploring something almost impossible to depict: the loss that never happened. Transparent planes contain fragments of structures, people, numbers, weather, decisions and risk.
From one precise position they align, but the central subject is an intentional empty space — the protected thing represented through absence.
Sometimes the best outcome is the thing you never see.
05 / UNIQUE POTENTIAL
Only From Here
Many completely different objects, shapes and materials hang independently. From almost every position they appear unrelated. From one exact point in the room, the pieces visually align into a single graceful image.
Every part retains its individuality. The unity exists precisely because the pieces are different.
The viewer doesn't merely read the idea. They discover it.
06 / COMMUNITY
54,000 Hours
One year of volunteerism becomes an obsessively handmade work: thousands of individual marks, cuts, impressions or small pieces — one for every hour contributed.
Across the room, the marks become a quiet human form or gesture. Up close, that image dissolves into individual acts.
One hour doesn't look like much. Thousands of them change a community.
07 / THE ENTERPRISE
Independent / Together
Each Holmes Murphy location receives its own sculptural form, created partly from stories or materials gathered locally. No two are identical, but all share an underlying geometry.
For the centennial, the separate forms physically interlock into a larger work. The system can continue growing whenever Holmes Murphy does.
Independent does not mean isolated.
08 / THE CENTENNIAL
100 / The Living Archive
Beginning now, the artist quietly collects selected fragments: a handwritten note, retired business card, employee words, artifacts from offices, community moments, photographs and materials tied to meaningful events.
In 2032 those fragments become one major centennial work. From across the room, it resolves into a monumental 100. Up close, the number disappears into the human pieces that built it.
From a distance: one hundred years. Up close: the people who made them possible.
07 / THE ROAD TO 100
SIX YEARS / ONE CONTINUING STORY
Don't create the
100th anniversary in 2032.
Begin creating it now. Let the collection, stories and materials accumulate deliberately until the centennial becomes the culmination of something Holmes Murphy has watched grow.
2026Begin
Establish the visual language. Create the first signature piece. Start the living archive.
2027Listen
Expand employee and client storytelling. Create work from inside the culture.
2028Connect
Bring community and location stories into the growing collection.
2029Scale
Introduce larger architectural work and traveling pieces across the enterprise.
2030Gather
Deepen the archive. Revisit stories. Connect generations and geographies.
2031Compose
Begin forming the final centennial installation from six years of material.
2032Reveal
Unveil a centennial that could only have been created by starting years earlier.
08 / YEAR ONE
01
MAKE THE IDEA REAL
Quality over quota.
The first year could produce one major signature installation, several smaller original works, an employee-generated art project, one community-focused piece and a documented collection of stories from across the company.
Some years might produce twelve works. Another year might produce four because one becomes architectural in scale. The measure is not volume. It is whether each piece earns its place in the collection.
ORIGINAL ARTSTORY COLLECTIONPROCESS FILMEMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENTCOMMUNITY WORKBRAND CONTENT
By the end of Year One, Holmes Murphy wouldn't simply be considering an Artist Ambassador program. It would have a collection beginning to prove why one should exist.
09 / THE DIFFERENCE
NOT A CAMPAIGN
A living
cultural asset.
Campaigns end.
Posts disappear.
Videos move down the feed.
Original artwork behaves differently.
A piece created from a real Holmes Murphy story may still be telling people something about Holmes Murphy 30 years from now.
10 / WHY ME
CLINT HANSEN
Find the story.
Make it matter.
I have spent more than three decades turning complex organizations, ideas and stories into things people can understand and remember.
Sometimes that has meant brand systems, campaigns, illustration, film and design. Sometimes it has meant creating a physical work of art.
The medium changes. The purpose doesn't.
The Holmes Murphy Artist Ambassador idea brings those disciplines together: art, brand, storytelling and human connection.
I'm not proposing to become Holmes Murphy's decorator. I'm proposing to become one of its storytellers.
11 / ONE CONVERSATION
WHAT COULD HOLMES MURPHY CREATE BEFORE IT TURNS 100?
Start with
20 minutes.
I'm not asking Holmes Murphy to approve a six-year art program from a website. I'm asking for a conversation.
Twenty minutes to discuss what stories matter most, where the idea could begin, and whether an artist working from inside Holmes Murphy could create something no outside artist commissioned in 2032 ever could.
Some stories are best told later.
Others have to be captured while they are still happening.