{"id":57435,"date":"2007-02-05T09:28:17","date_gmt":"2007-02-05T15:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=57435"},"modified":"2023-11-04T14:24:59","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T20:24:59","slug":"curtis-olson-phoenix-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/curtis-olson-phoenix-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Curtis Olson @ Phoenix Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Green Hills Silo<\/p><\/div>\n

Multi-media artist Curtis Olson<\/a>\u00a0has returned this month to Park City\u2019s\u00a0Phoenix Gallery\u00a0with an eagerly anticipated exhibit entitled\u00a0Earth and Sky<\/i>. Olson has become a forceful draw for the gallery since he began showing there in 2003 as collectors have become fascinated with his contemporary evocations of the western landscape.<\/p>\n

Though Olson has spent time on both coasts \u2013 he studied architecture at the University of North Carolina and pursued his career in that field in San Francisco \u2013 it is the West that is at the heart of his work. He grew up in the West — in Idaho and Montana — and it is to the West — in his current residence outside of Jackson, Wyoming — that he has returned. Olson moved to Wyoming over a decade ago, and it was there that his successful and award-winning career as an architect began, slowly, to give way to his life-long passion and current vocation as an artist. Since devoting himself fulltime to painting in 2002, Olson has been represented in numerous shows in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, and he has garnered a number of awards, including a Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship in 2004. Most recently, he was selected as the official artist for the 2006 Jackson Hole Film Festival.<\/p>\n

Olson\u2019s experience of the West is central to his work; but that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll see traditional \u201cwestern art\u201d at the Phoenix Gallery exhibition. \u201cI try to avoid playing up the Myth of the West,\u201d Olson says, \u201cthough the art market really pushes one in that direction.\u201d Olson\u2019s hometown of Jackson is full of galleries propping up a myth of the West full of cowboys, Indians and majestic vistas. Olson, however, is interested in exploring and evoking in his paintings the West he has come to know in his many travels. \u201c\u2019The Landscape Memory\u2019 pieces are based on my photographs of actual places,\u201d Olson says of his group of works that feature quiet black and white images embedded in textured, abstract grounds. \u201cI see this as much different than what traditional Western Landscape and Wildlife painters have done for hundreds of years, which is to create a fantasy world that does not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olson\u2019s photographs, taken from hours of scouring the landscape, are the visual anchors for his abstracted visual explorations. In his travels, he takes photographs of iconographic images of the West. Often these are lonely views: old barns, a lonely tree, abandoned farming equipment. While he is on location, Olson takes notes on color and mood, and uses these to develop his works when he returns to the studio. The starkness of his lonely, monotone photographs is dramatically set off by the thickly textured and vibrantly hued fields of color that constitute the majority of his works\u2019 space. Here Olson is able to fully vent his artistic expertise in an attempt to evoke the experience of the landscape rather than merely give the viewer an image of it. He does so with a variety of materials, including metal, plaster, dyes and wax, as well as objects found on location.<\/p>\n

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Yellowstone Zen Tree<\/p><\/div>\n

The found objects in Olson\u2019s work, often rusted metal scraps, are a manifestation of the artist\u2019s thematic interest in \u201cWabi-Sabi,\u201d the Japanese aesthetic worldview that finds beauty in the natural processes of life, impermanence, imperfection and the unpretentiousness of a rustic existence. “My intention is to capture an essence or a feeling of a specific place,\u201d the artist explains. \u201cI think of the \u2018lonleyness\u2019 of the western landscape. I am drawn to the solitary objects sitting in the land – a tree, an old shack etc.\u201d The result in Olson\u2019s work are pieces that use the western landscape not as a place of theatrical awe but as a source of meditation, creating a sense of melancholy and longing that turns the viewer inward.<\/p>\n

Olson\u2019s first solo show in Utah was at the Phoenix Gallery in December 2004, where he introduced his \u201cLandscape Memories.\u201d He returned last year with another successful exhibit, \u201cFaults, Sins and Dirt,\u201d and the gallery looks forward to displaying his new work. Judi Grenney, owner of Phoenix Gallery, notes that Olson\u2019s works have resonated strongly with their clients. Olson\u2019s work, she says, has \u201ca rare combination of contemporary and rustic qualities that has wide appeal.\u201d This appeal has frequently outmatched Olson\u2019s ability to provide the gallery with his labor-intensive paintings. \u201cThat’s part of what makes his shows so exciting,\u201d Grenney says. \u201cMany of his collectors have been waiting since the last show to add to their collection.”<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Earth and Sky<\/i>\u00a0these collectors will find plenty of what they have enjoyed in Olson\u2019s work in the past, but they will also be treated to a new series of paintings. \u201cI am tending to use my photos less and less,\u201d the artist says of his newest body of work. \u201cThis liberates me to concentrate on the pure unreferenced abstraction.\u201d Though he is concentrating more on the abstracted qualities of his work, Olson\u2019s pieces are still inspired by the West. From the images of the land Olson has turned his gaze skyward. In\u00a0Earth and Sky<\/i>, Olson will be debuting a new series of works inspired by maps of the stars. \u201cI reference the horizon in each piece,\u201d Olson says, \u201cand then play off an abstracted \u2018star map.\u2019\u201d In addition, four of the artist\u2019s \u201cPrayer of the Sun and Moon\u201d pieces will be on display.||<\/p>\n

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Prairie Wind<\/p><\/div>\n

Earth and Sky is at\u00a0Phoenix Gallery\u00a0through February 13th.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Multi-media artist Curtis Olson\u00a0has returned this month to Park City\u2019s\u00a0Phoenix Gallery\u00a0with an eagerly anticipated exhibit entitled\u00a0Earth and Sky. Olson has become a forceful draw for the gallery since he began showing there in 2003 as collectors have become fascinated with his contemporary evocations of the western landscape. Though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[1290,3913],"class_list":["post-57435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-curtis-olson","tag-phoenix-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/olson1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-15 18:13:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57435"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70058,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57435\/revisions\/70058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}