Olivia Fredericks
interview by Sam Campbell
For starters, let’s talk about your art origin story. How did you come to be an award-winning artist?
I think at the age when other kids stop drawing, I just didn’t? My brain works in images so I was always expressing myself that way. It’s cliche, but I did always know I’d be an artist. I didn’t always know what kind of artist (and maybe I still don’t) but my purpose is to make things and I’ll do that however I can.
What is your creative process?
Every piece comes together differently. Half the time I think and plan and then make the thing, and half the time I’m swept up in a frenzy and the thing emerges. I primarily work digitally and with various printmaking process, my favorites being risograph, cyanotype, and screenprinting. All of those processes used to be used for utilitarian and industrial printing before digital printers, which I think is super cool.
When looking at your portfolio, including the works to be featured in our magazine, the first thing that I notice is the vivid, stark colors in each one. Could you speak on your use of color, and how you approach color when composing pieces?
I go through phases with my color palette. When I was making work about my Lola’s former home, I got really stuck on the salmony pink stucco she used on the house’s exterior. Then when I was living in Maine, I got really stuck on blue because it’s such a prevalent color on the New England coast. When i’m going through one of my phases, I am extremely loyal to a color and have a hard time moving on until I feel like I’ve exhausted it.
Could you speak a little about the different pieces that are being included in this issue? We have an assortment of your Commercial Work Illustrations, as well as “Fantasy,” our cover art for the issue.
The Pace House illustrations are drawings I did while in residence at the Stephen Pace house in Stonington, Maine. He was an important painter in Maine and he left his house for artist residencies, with all of the original furniture and his paintings and studio equipment. I loved his house and made those analytical drawings to highlight the more interesting bits. “Fantasy” was a cyanotype on fabric that I made as a little escapist gesture for myself. Covid is a huge bummer and I was thinking about how the strangeness in fairytales―while often more violent―still feels lighthearted and whimsical in comparison to our current strange world.
On your website, I noticed that you incorporate a variety of artwork together to provide a hybrid experience―from still images to zines and videos. What drew you to mixing mediums and, in your experience, do you find that there is a push for or against hybridization in the art community?
I actually have noticed a lot of artists doing inter-media work and I find it super interesting. Johanna Drucker writes about it in “The Work Event” as creating “ecologies” of artwork and that comparison to the biological world has really stuck with me. When pieces exist in different forms, they do act like these different species coming together to create an ecosystem of work. I’m interested in world-building and having work that can occupy multiple spaces or engage a viewer in different ways expands the kinds of worlds I’m building.
I also get bored of doing the same thing for too long. Like if I’m sitting and drawing for a couple weeks, I have to do something do something standing and active (like screenprinting) after. My work can take many forms simply because I’m easily bored.
One thing that I’ve noticed your art accomplishes very well is its subtle use of humor. My particular favorite is currently in your Pink House comic―the part about the pine cones being able to be made into birdfeeders, but the pine needles being useless (see: oliviamfredricks.com/Pink-House). Humor is often something that writers struggle with, and I’m sure artists do too, walking that tight rope between a joke landing or falling flat. How do you combat this when creating your artwork and do you have any advice for a would-be artistic comedian?
I don’t go in necessarily trying to be funny, but it comes through in my work because I do notice how absurd or silly things can be. Or maybe I don’t want my work to be overly serious so I focus on the things that are kind of silly around me. If I make a humorous piece, it’s more like the world is a funny place and i’m repackaging that for people. I made a piece that’s a map of all the places I leave cups in my apartment, and it’s this very precisely rendered image that was pretty difficult to print but the subject matter is a silly thing to focus on. There’s something about the amount of labor vs the importance of the subject matter that is bouncing around my brain when I make work. Also to make something that’s humorous is to give a little gift to the viewer.
As far as jokes falling flat, I don’t know how one combats that. I’m a terrible joke-teller.
What projects are you working on right now or planning for the future?
I am currently in graduate school at Tyler School of Art (Temple University) in Philadelphia. I am making a lot of zines and I’m taking a poetry class and I learned web design recently. I’ve been keeping my work off of social media while I’m in school because I don’t want my need for social media validation in my head while I’m experimenting and learning more about myself and my practice. I’m doing a lot of experimenting.
Olivia Fredericks is a printmaker, zine-maker, and illustrator originally from Fayetteville, Arkansas. She received a BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in printmaking at the University of Arkansas School of Art. She is interested in using the printed medium for installations, books, zines, and ephemeral objects. Her work has been shown in numerous group shows around the country, including the Screenprint Biennial and PrintAustin Expo. She is currently a print-making studio tech and Artist-in-Residence at Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine.