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Biographical Sketch: Eric Olson Eric Olson was born on November 19, 1947 in Denver, Colorado. His parents, William C. and Mary M. Olson, were both visually creative. Although his father was actively developing an academic career in International Relations, he found time to give Eric instruction in lettering, basic composition and photography from an early age. His mother has painted since she was 12, and encouraged him to develop skills in drawing and painting. Early Years and Influences Young Eric took private watercolor instruction at age 8 with Phyllis Skelton, a student of Dong Kingman, and often painted on the campus of Scripps College. Growing up surrounded by the creative and intellectual stimulation of seven colleges in the Claremont, CA university environment, he had early and frequent exposure to both fine and applied arts as diverse as murals by Diego Rivera and raku pottery by Paul Soldner and his students. He recalls being impressed by abstract expressionism, typified in retrospect by artists of the so-called "West Coast school" in Southern California. In 1958 during his father’s first sabbatical year, he traveled to England with his family and lived in Oxford, England, attending Magdalen College School. His experience in the staid, stiffly competitive English school system and subsequent long trips touring Europe in a family camper bus gave him a life-changing, foundational exposure to European culture, art and architecture. Training Eric Olson began his formal training at Pratt Institute in 1966, where his foundation year teachers included painter Herbert Beerman, (who had studied with Josef Albers) color theorist Mary Buckley and later, in the Industrial Design program, designer Etan Manasse. As President of his class, he founded the Pratt Institute Student Gallery and a closed circuit student radio station, winning the Pratt Cup for Outstanding Student Contribution. During his year-long senior project, he developed concepts of a Visible City, consisting of written theory and sketches of a visionary urbanism that proposed spatial orientation through large scale public art, disclosure of hidden systems such as exposed and color-coding ducts and pipes and other imaginative design strategies. Summer and freelance work included collaborations with Etan Manasse, and a design internship in his childhood home town of Claremont, CA under the sponsorship of leading Southern California designer Tom Jamieson. He received internships for two seasons at Chermayeff & Giesmar Associates, where he worked with Ivan Chermayeff, Tom Geismar and designer Steve Fineberg on projects as diverse as the US Pavilion at Expo 70 held in Osaka, and the Electric Circus, one of the first multi-media electronic nightclubs, and for various NYC design firms, including Henry Dreyfuss. Post College Post Pratt, he lived in Brooklyn for several years, where he co-founded a four man art collective called Aleph (a math symbol representing “infinity of infinities”). The group was invited to participate in “Contemplation Environments,” an exhibition developed by the Museum of Contemporary Crafts under the direction of the legendary Director Paul Smith, Director Emeritus. According to Time Magazine, the exhibition “outdid” the Museum of Modern Art and helped pioneer a tectonic shift in the public role of the contemporary art museum. Career in Industry Olson spent the next 24 years in industry in a variety of roles. He began as an industrial and graphic designer, working for a short time with Chermayeff and Giesmar. A chance meeting with Mark Victor Hansen led to Triadome Inc., a company he co-founded with Hansen to design and produce geodesic dome structures from indigenous materials, based on a concept first proposed by Hansen’s mentor R. Buckminster Fuller. Later, he developed numerous award-winning products such as the moldable fingergrip technology for the Sensa Pen, for a diverse and distinguished list of clients such as IBM, Vivitar, Mobil Oil, and Nakamichi America. During his career, Olson worked to expand and integrate design thinking into all aspects of the marketing process. His “umbrella theory,” which in simple terms views marketing as a mother art encompassing “arms” such as packaging, research, product design, advertising, corporate ID, exhibitions design, and so on, became the foundation of his commerical philosophy. Olson often took creative sabbaticals to revisit and nurture his inherent interest in visual and plastic arts. In his late ‘40’s he became interested in fine woodworking and took private instruction with Peter Shapiro, head of the woodworking shop at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and later apprenticed with the iconic Southern California woodworker Howie Lewin. His workshop was located in the machine warehouse of Los Angeles poet and philosopher Jesse Barragan. He indulged his interest in radio and supported the arts by designing AirPlay, the magazine of NPR station KPCC in Pasadena, CA (since superseded by online content). He also frequently visited the Villa Serbelloni, situated above the Italian town of Bellagio on the shores of Lake Como, where his father was then Director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Conference and Study Center. There he photographed the people, dramatic scenery and light of the Northern Italian Lake country. These experiences and those of photographing urban scenes in many European cities, became the inspiration for his later work. In the late ‘90’s Olson moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and immersed himself in the ground-breaking, "immersive education" digital media program at Expressions College for Digital Arts (Emeryville, CA). This experience developed his skills in computer-aided design, modeling and image processing, many of which supported to his later success in fine art. His final years in commerce were marked with work in information architecture, user experience design and web development, which found application in websites for corporations, as well as cultural organizations and institutions such as the Oakland City Ballet and Oakland International Airport. Current Work Able at last to work full time in the arts, Olson returned to photography in 2003. When the scheduled artist withdrew due to illness, he was given his first solo show at the Barnes & Noble bookstore, in Reston, VA. From that point forward, he has explored photography as a form of fine art. |
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