eric john olson

Tunnels

admin — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:14:04 +0000

Two site specific sound installations of abandoned and boarded up crawl spaces were created for “Not to Scale”, the Smoke Farm Lo-Fi Arts festival. Together they try to recreate childhood memories of prohibited passages into an underground labyrinth of tunnels, connecting ideas and spaces across great distances. A series of sacred spaces that one could hide away prized possessions/reconnect/bury their past.

International District Tunnel in Seattle, WA

Smoke Farm Tunnel in Arlington, WA

Photos by Cindy Apple (1-3) and Timothy Firth (4-5)

Time lapse of building the “tunnel”

I
admin — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:37:19 +0000

First video in a series of meditations on being present by destroying attachment to the past.

I Threatened to Jump 207 Times in 1986

admin — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:00:34 +0000

A series of works on paper that examine my childhood fears, hazing, adventures, and other distorted nostalgy.

Quantifying Contentment

admin — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:01:40 +0000

For over 60 days I tried to gather statistics about my mood and a number of factors that I felt impacted it. In an attempt to correlate these two things I would draw and color a self portrait depending on how I felt and keep a tally of the different variables that could affect these moods. These variables included: hours of sleep I had, number of alcoholic drinks, cups of coffee, days since I last had sex, negative thoughts about myself, minutes of mediation, and minutes of exercise. From this data I created a number of stacked area graphs showing the distribution of these feelings by color in regards to each variable over the course of this social experiment. All of the graphs and portraits I collected can be seen on the Quantifying Contentment website.

Thought Experiment

admin — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:52:57 +0000

So Timothy and I decided to retire the old Industrial Dinosaur name, and start a new studio/artist collective called Thought Experiment. Come check out our studios on the 2nd floor of Inscape in Seattle’s Chinatown or check out the new website: http://thawt.it

Clear as a Bell

admin — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:42:52 +0000

Clear as a Bell from Eric John Olson on Vimeo.

Childhood Ghosts

admin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 01:04:13 +0000

This interactive animation was created with openFrameworks and a series of hand drawn frames of the child.

Childhood Ghosts from Eric John Olson on Vimeo.

The following are still frames from the animation:

Hairless

admin — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 08:29:56 +0000

I created this series of drawings in an attempt to play with the idea of how removing ones hair and clothing creates a space that blurs the lines of gender and individuality, and in response accentuates vulnerability and interconnectedness.

Trash Bag Kids

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:30:13 +0000

This project was inspired by the trash bags stacked up on every street throughout New York City. Walking by these huge, overflowing piles every week, a person can’t help but question how people can create so much “trash”. Also, a person with a vivid imagination, such as myself, cannot help but daydream about these piles of trash taking on a life of their own. To try to help other people imagine just that, I took the iconic eyeballs of Sesame Street’s Big Bird and stuck them on piles of trash throughout New York City.

The project evolved into this series of photographs after more and more questions kept popping into my mind. Questions I needed to ask myself and others. Can we imagine a different potential for these piles of bags? Why do we assume it is trash? Where else do we make similar assumptions in our lives? How is this perspective related to privilege in society? With these questions, observing the reactions of children to the project and reflecting on my previous work as an art teacher in a low income housing development in Seattle, I decided to document the project with a series of photographs taken in NYCHA housing developments throughout Brooklyn and Queens.

Golden Eagles

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 06:48:01 +0000

These photos were taken during the summer of 2010 at Cumberland Island, Georgia. It is a large barrier island housing pristine maritime forests, undeveloped beaches and wide marshes whispering stories of a forgotten past. In an attempt to explore the feelings of loss surrounding my father’s death, I photographed this series of portraits of myself and my partner vulnerably navigating the ruins and maritime forest. Eagles are a reoccurring symbol in my work that reference the relationships we create between those things we revere and ourselves, as a father and his son/a country and its people.