Bloom Universal

The Art of Goodwill residency is an inaugural residency that asks artists to find materials at goodwill stores and turn those found items into works of art. Two art works are created to be put up for auction at the end of the residency to benefit the art of goodwill’s work fund. A program that is determined to provide less fortunate people with the materials and guidance they need to have a career to get out of poverty.

In this program I found glass material from wine, bourbon and decorative glasses and cut, ground and polished them. In addition I added decorative films to create color shadows. The suspended glass reflects and refracts onto the surrounding walls and creates a light show. This work was an extension on the Ethereal Series and harnessed the power of potential expressed in the light sources and the expansion of space due to the reflections and shadows.

The shadow elements were inspired by the street artist “Swoon” and made up of found pictures in books. Each photo has a hand cut floral decorative film added to it and is cut in an efflorescent pattern to evoke a blooming nature. The three images seen through the tangible, reflective and negative quality work together to create an illusion reminiscent of the experience of visualizing dreams or memories.

Working as an artist can be hard... I started serving at Against the Grain Brewery to help make things a little easier and as I started their chalk board artist moved on to greener pastures. I swooped right in and started chalking it up! I have learned so much about text, fonts, calligraphy and of course - chalk dust! Against the Grain has the best brew and super cool branding. It has been such an honor to work with them!

Perennial Being

the mirage you see in desperation

the will the move forward.

Hope.

the power, energy, and light inside your body, heart, mind.

your favorite memory

those butterflies you feel in your stomach when something really great or really terrible might happen

finding the reason to go an alternate route

getting lost

being broken

afraid

alone

sad

but just like the peonies from your mothers garden

that were placed around the house

You will attract butterflies

returning

Blooming

with more vigor and grace

Every. Single. Time.

- Whitney Olsen

We slow down as the day comes to an end. The sun slowly retreats beneath the horizon and its light is lost. Our eyes close as we drift to sleep,  only to be awakened by the lights and shadows, falling and flying of dreamland where it is as bright as day in the darkness.

There is something incredible happening right now inside of each of us… it is an electrical current in your chest originated by the energy of the sun.  The stardust inside each of you that lives deep in your bones and throughout your body is powerful. Each night, as day surrenders todark, our mind lights up with dreams of tomorrow, subconsciously guiding us through the battles of this amazing journey, life.

Perennial Being is you and me and everyone else. It is a being in itself with a pulse of its own. The show confronts the inherent cycles and the transmissions of energy that make our lives feel so sinuous. As a creator my focus was to radiate the spark unique to each of us through an internal structure, while relating the madness we harbor as a skin to shed on the outer walls.

I am a multi-dimensional artist working with glass, light, and mixed media to indulge in the conversation of being. My work exists in the intersection between the corporeal and the imagination, where the fixed and infinite collide. Where reality is neither here nor there.  I graduated from the University of Louisville with my Bachelor of Fine Arts in glass and sculpture and have continued my education at craft schools such as Penland School of Crafts and Pilchuck Glass School. I continue to work with glass daily at Louisville's own Flame Run Studio and Gallery and have assisted glass artists around the United States

.  The journey has just begun

Cuz mama cant get enough LIGHT in her life. Neon is a dying art form and something I wish to continue with. I am brand new to this arena of work and find it incredibly exciting. 

Energy on paper. Mine is strikingly floral.

“Observation mediated by light is essentially unstable and changing just as our ability to hold an experience is fleeting and subjective”
                      
- Gary Garrels the senior curator for painting and drawing at the SFMOMA
    

Light is the quintessential metaphor for life as it constructs our visual world physiologically and sociologically. As the plants grow and morph around us so are the people changing the way our environments and cultures grow and inevitably the people, us, we, me, you - are changing just the same in an endless fecund reality.

My work is the intersection between the corporeal and the imagination which I find to be the most fascinating when dealing with the various properties of light. As we daydream we focus on a an “idea” of light that is built within our minds and makes up our thoughts and memories, one that interacts with physical light creating a form of illusion. The very layered images in our minds that mesh with reality create the most unique experience, one that cannot be calculated or reckoned. My work in its essence is the moment you start to have that experience: it’s energy is an efflorescent cadence that can only be heard at the right moment.

Each panel in Daydream is constructed by blowing hot glass into the form of a cylinder. The cylinder is cut so that it is an open tube. The tube has to be cold worked which is a form of polishing the glass with abrasive material and water so that it is even and flat. The glass is then cut in half so there are two half cylinders that are then slumped in an oven up to 1200 degrees. After the glass is slumped it is a flat sheet. This method is the traditional way to make sheet glass and how windows were formed back in the day. The glass is covered with vinyl and then the pattern is cut out. The glass is then sandblasted, drilled and then hung on the wall.

I started experimenting with metal and multiple materials to play with the dimensional qualities of space such as light and shadow. These works were created in 2012-2013