By Olivia Turner | Arts & Life Editor
Walking into Cultivate 7Twelve, one of Waco’s art galleries, is like walking into a rainbow. The numerous artworks emit explosions of color as you move through the space, and on this particular visit, Baylor graduate Abby Olsen’s paintings took center stage.
Her exhibition, titled “Odds and Ends,” is a series of oil paintings featuring staring, human-like figures. The name is a nod to her Baylor BFA exhibition titled “Ups and Downs,” she said. While there is no dominant theme in the exhibition, faces undoubtedly appear repeatedly among the colorful, drooping and stretched figures.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with faces,” Olsen said. “I was like the one kid in class who always drew that one eye.”
Olsen said she also finds inspiration in film, which was her minor when she attended Baylor. The concept of character design and the representation of the human figure in animation fuels much of her method, she said.
The artist, who is from Belton, Texas, said she chose to work with oil paints for this exhibition because she can take greater creative freedom with this medium.
“You can be so much more indecisive,” she said. “And I also enjoy experimenting with my painting style – I really enjoy this wet-on-wet painting technique.”
Although she majored in painting, Olsen said she actually started out studying pre-med and then switched to studying math before turning her attention back to her artistic skills. She said the dissociation and isolation she experienced during COVID-19 her freshman year, coupled with the influence of an art class she was taking at the time, really showed her that she was destined to create.
“Right now I’m making art because it’s how I find my place in the world,” Olsen said.
Although she has found her calling, Olsen says it is still difficult to be financially successful as an artist.
“I really like the art department at Baylor, but I feel like there’s a problem in most art departments: We learn art history and we learn how to make good art, but we don’t learn how to market yourself as an artist or how to take care of yourself,” Olsen said.
In response, Olsen said, she and several other art students decided to form the Starving Artists’ Club. The club’s dual goals were to foster camaraderie among art students and to teach them how to make a profit from their work. They did this by getting them to set up booths at places like Common Grounds and Fountain Mall to display and sell their art.
Gallery director Debbie Wright said Cultivate 7Twelve frequently collaborates with students from the Baylor Starving Artists’ Club. She said a particular appeal of Olsen’s art is her style – something that might entice visitors and passersby to take a closer look at her work.
“It’s really just about taking old techniques and other known methods that are historical in normal traditional art and modernizing them,” Wright said. “What’s really unique about her pieces is that she has a sort of surrealist aesthetic, but then she combines it with more romantic essences from the period and then somehow gives them that extra, modern touch.”
Wright said she encourages viewers to allow their own emotions to flow while looking at Olsen’s paintings. That way, you can see what each work evokes in you and, in turn, learn from that experience, she said.
Olsen said she hopes viewers can find some humor, but also stability, in the plays.
“Even in some of my weirder pieces, I feel like there’s a strange serenity or peacefulness to me,” she said.
For an artist to exhibit their work in the space, they must apply online, Wright said. She said Cultivate 7Twelve is always accepting submissions and is open to anyone.
