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Charles
Olson
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“Living here has allowed a lot of things to happen,” said Charles
Olson. Olson is sitting in H.B. Culpepper’s, a restaurant and bar on
the main drag of Philadelphia Street in Indiana, Pa. Immediately, he
admits that some might find irony in the suggestion that there are
opportunities to be had in a small town in western Pennsylvania. But the
artist’s smile hints that he knows better. |
Two floors above Culpepper’s, Olson rents a
studio space where he paints 50 to 60 canvases a year. His canvases then
leave Indiana for exhibition in New York City, Philadelphia, Germany and
France, and his work is in a number of collections, including the Carnegie
Museum of Art, Osaka (Japan) Museum of Modern Art and Galerie Lillebonne
in Nancy, France.
While impressive, these accomplishments, said Olson, aren’t an ideal
measure of his success.
“This work is
fickle. I make things, but they go away. I prefer to focus on the present
tense, with whatever’s going on in the studio. I ask myself, ‘Do I have
something on an easel that interests me?’”
For Olson, everything that happens while a
painting is still on the easel is work. He schedules time to be in the
studio and expects that his work benefits from a routine.
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Facade: Public
Building
acrylic on canvas
70" by 126"
1998
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Charmed Still Life
XXX
acrylic on paper
36" x 52"
2000
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“The only thing I have to tell myself is to
show up for work. Just coming into the studio with regularity, things
happen that you can’t anticipate. “I learned not to wait around for
inspiration—whenever I did that, I was just
disappointed.”
Olson
received both his bachelor’s in art education and his master’s in painting
from IUP and will receive the university’s “Distinguished Alumni” award
this March. |
He made a gift of five
original works to IUP in 1998, saying he feels a debt to the
university.
“I fell in love with making
art at IUP. I had a good range of professors throughout my education. My
English professors were just as influential as my art
professors.
“At the undergraduate
and graduate levels, you learn the things necessary to maintain yourself
as an artist. I graduated 25 years ago, but I don’t think it’s any easier
than it ever was.”
In fact, to Olson,
meeting obstacles is part of the process of making art. “I work a
number of canvases at a time because you always run into difficulties,” he
said, “and if you’re making one piece at time, it magnifies that
frustration.
“If it’s not like that,
if the piece just comes out smoothly, what you have in your hands is a
cliché. You haven’t learned anything creating the
piece.”
Olson’s current work, which will be exhibited in Kipp Gallery March 1
through 24, is more sculptural and more influenced by
textures.
“When I was at IUP,
I was very interested in sculpture and that interest has never left me
completely,” said Olson. “In my recent works, it’s back with a
vengeance.”
Since last May, Olson
has been creating three-dimensional ceramic forms and painting them (see
right-hand image) sees these objects as “artifacts,” which he then
incorporates into his paintings. |
Artifact X
painted
ceramic
24"
2000
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When displayed in the same gallery space, the painting references the
sculpture, providing substance to Olson’s abstract works.
“My paintings, in many ways, are idealized
sculptures,” said Olson. “Painting a sculpture, I can determine the
setting of the piece and control the lighting.”
Similar statements could be made about the
abstract architectural works painted by Olson in the late ‘90s, indicating
a gradual evolution in his artwork.
“I’m not an experimenter,” said Olson. “We need to have experimenters, but
the schizophrenic nature of that work doesn’t have the integrity that I
seek.”
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