James Olsen BFA: 2016

James Olsen

2D Emphasis

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."

- Edgar Degas

I spent a lot of time thinking about this essay and how I would go about introducing my art. It seemed so daunting at first, how do you describe work that is so personal? How do you explain work that is so in the moment? It took me some time, but I soon realized it wasn't so much about explaining the art itself but the mindset that led me to the work that I do.

Much of what I do is based on my own situation, I struggle, yet survive with severe mental illness, and I have long seen the lack of willingness to discuss the issue. We are the countries dirty little secret it seems, if you are in a wheelchair its easy to see whats wrong, but how do you understand someone who seems fine one day, and then can't get out of bed for the next week? I realized that I wanted to deal with this situation with my work, I came back to school because of my illness, and I hoped that by doing work inspired by that it would help me heal. The maps that I have been working on for the last four years are a testament to that, it grew out of a project that I did in my 2D Design class taught by former Professor Emeritus Susan Makov. We were told to use maps in a creative way, I decided to try and explain my mind, so I took the largest subway system in the world, London England, and built the piece out of nearly thirty layers. I used it to show cacophony that is my mind, an insane mass of thoughts and feelings that are the layers of my emotional and mental state. I continued from there at the urging of Professor Makov with the series, explaining different aspects of my feeling and life. I hoped that I was able to show my world through a different method, using the world around us to convey something so personal.

My next major works stemmed out of looking at the region we live in, and seeing the destruction on the environment that our local refineries are doing. I was out walking one day and saw an oil slick on the ground, it looked so beautiful, yet so horrible, I saw the opportunity to speak about environmental disaster and the damage it is doing, and yet that we are so used to seeing it that we don't really think about that. This is what led to my Poisoned Beauty series that was juried into the student show this past year. I digitally captured the images then manipulated them to look like beautiful stained glass windows, initally you see the beauty, but when you step back you get a full look at the horror of what we are doing to our planet.

I wanted to talk a little about process, I do almost all of my work digitally, I love the feel of the digital pen and the ability to produce work that I can scale to whatever size I want, I use Adobe Illustrator for almost all of what I do. It also comes back to my initial work, because of the mental issues I am on a lot of medications so I shake a lot, using a regular pencil is extremely frustrating, with digital I can clean my work up and give it the clean work that I strive for in all that I do.

Recently I have been moving into work that involves programming as its core, using software called LOGO I have been working on a series of tribute pieces in BFA Seminar as a tribute to the life of my recently deceased father. I am looking forward to further exploring these methods over the coming months and years.

I cannot express how much scholarship support would help myself and my family in these final years here at Weber State, the knowledge that some of our financial burden would be eased would eliminate some of the external stress that I have been feeling, and allow me to focus on my art.

Thank you for your consideration.

James Olsen
BFA 2D Design

James Olsen BFA

Pages

Monday, October 10, 2016

James Olsen BFA: Paradise Lost

James Olsen BFA: Poisoned Beauty 4

James Olsen BFA: Poisoned Beauty 3

James Olsen BFA: Poisoned Beauty 2

James Olsen BFA: Poisoned Beauty 1

James Olsen BFA: Hiroshima - Loss

James Olsen BFA: New York - Hope

James Olsen BFA: London - Cacophony