A Lovely Little Community

In the Mears Library Gallery, you may have found a fine art show filled with wondrous abstract pieces by former faculty member Nancy Olive and alumni Emily Larson. The show came about after Emily and her fellow graduates found themselves returning to Nancy’s place every few months to eat and toss around creative ideas. This became her little community and helped inspire her creativity. The style of the paintings was directly inspired by Nancy’s mentor Joanne Emmers, whose watered-down acrylic creates flowing paintings with great depth. The process is a time-consuming one, as the canvas is entirely wet before the watered acrylic is applied, then it must completely dry before the next layers are added. While the idea of speeding up the drying may be tempting to others, both artists explain that waiting is an important part of the process, and they trust Joanne and her technique.

While many of the paintings were sold on opening night, there are a few that were already spoken for, including Lampyridae, which Nancy describes as, “… splashy, colorful, and spontaneous looking.” She explained that she is trying to push her own art in that direction, so it serves as great inspiration. Emily’s favorite is Multiscapes which is in the process of being turned into screen prints made by Nancy herself. While they are both proud of the show, they did open up and admit there were times in the creation that they felt some regret. “This technique gives no forgiveness…” admitted Nancy. If a layer was too dark, it was there to stay. And Emily explained she felt that some pieces may have been overworked and she preferred how they were a few layers ago. But with those feelings comes a chance to inspire a new idea and take the piece in a whole other direction. Even if a piece does not turn out anything like previously imagined does not make it bad. Sometimes walking away from a piece for a while helps as well, as Emily did with her first piece, Lampyridae.