Daily Inspiration: Meet Andy Olson

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Andy Olson.

Hi Andy, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I got my start just like everybody else does, as a child. Even in new creative efforts, everyone blasts off from a launchpad built on the solidified concrete of childhood.

Mine began in Georgetown, Colorado, living next to the stables of the local blacksmith and folk artist, Buff Rutherford, who Welded sculptures out of horseshoes (sculpt-shoes) and hosted cowboy poetry nights. My grandfather was a wood carver and carpenter, giving my Dad a background for his own woodworking and stained glass endeavors. One of my grandmothers was a traditional quilter and knitted, and the other had a home pottery studio, worked in museums, and was an eccentric collector of yard art.

I graduated from Parmalee Elementary, was expelled from Evergreen High School, and didn’t finish a degree in public history at Fort Lewis College in Durango. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today without meeting a number of supportive artists and teachers like Matt Clagett (ceramicist, jeweler, educator), Ann Simpson (painter, sculptor, educator), Don Sahli (painter), David Brass (stone, sculptor) and Heyoka Merrifield (goldsmith).

I couldn’t be where I am right now if it wasn’t for my dad, who gave me tools instead of toys, and my role model mom, who received a lifetime achievement award this year in Austria for her global work for the deaf and hard of hearing culture and audiology community.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Once, in an interview, somebody asked me what sacrifices I had to make for my art, and I first thought that I didn’t have to make any sacrifices because all losses just come with the territory of being an artist, kind of like a bad professional gambler.

But I was thinking of a sacrifice as something you already have and then choose to give up, rather than something you will never get to have because of what you chose to do. Now, ten years older, I see some of the sacrifices I’ve made by denying other life paths for this one.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I suppose my official title is Interdisciplinary Artworker, which speaks to the discipline and work it takes to create multiple mediums of art, as well as the interconnectedness of all things.

My business, Octagram Craftwork, is named for an eight-pointed star-shaped diagram representing my eight main mediums: stained glass, ceramics, woodwork, woodburning, drawing, painting, sculpture, and collage. Always juggling throughout the decades, each medium connects to the next and builds off the former to create an eight-pointed compass rose from which I can circumnavigate the artistic world.

As an artist, I currently focus on three main bodies of work: painting, sculpture, and collage, and I have recently been debuting some of these new pieces in galleries around Colorado. (40 West, Core, Memento Mori, Center of the Arts Evergreen, Boulder Library Gallery). However, as a craftsman, I am constantly producing small-batch pottery and stained glass pieces for art markets, pop-up shops, festivals, and events.

Custom stained glass windows are a big part of my business, but I’ve accepted custom art jobs doing almost everything: Custom pottery (mugs, bowls, cups, shot glasses, trays, etc.), wooden boxes with stone inlays and pyrographic designs, picture frames, lanterns, sculptural wooden home decor, ceramic planters bottles and bud vases, wind chimes, hummingbirds carved in elk antlers, hand-drawn gig posters for over 25 concerts, and even Japanese shou sugi ban burned wood wall art.

One of my most popular product lines/bodies of work would be my wooden lantern hanging pendant lights. Always drawn, designed, and cut by hand, my lanterns blend the timeless and natural aesthetic of wood, paper, and canvas with glowing light, precise patterns, and scientific forms of sacred geometry and platonic solids.

My other best-selling product line is by far The Original Stained Glass Pressed Pokémon Card Preservation Panels. Delicately placed authentic Pokémon Trading cards are permanently pressed and preserved in between two sheets of glass and framed in a corresponding colorway of stained glass pieces to create a glowing reflective relic and protective shrine to the nostalgic trappings of collectible cards.

Because stained glass is historically, a typically religious art form, any secular imagery in stained glass takes on subversive and comic undertones. If “the medium is the message,” in this case, Pokémon becomes holy and is revered simply by being in stained glass.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
When the right person finds the right piece.

When I dont have to explain myself, and they “get it” the instant they see it.

Pricing:

• Custom stained glass can range from $50-$5,000, always based on the client’s ideal design, size, or budget.

Contact Info:

• Website: Octagramcraftwork.com
• Instagram: @octagramcraftwork