Professional Work
Pollinator Game Application
Working with computer science majors and faculty, I have made art for a game app for children learning about bees and pollination. I have also assisted with managing the project in organization and research.
Sample bee and flower species from Pollinator Game Application
Bombus affinis
Melissodes illatus
Echinacea angustifolia
Rudbeckia hirta
Women's Organizations in Stevens County
A digital exhibit static site built from the ground up using Ruby, Markdown, and GitHub.
Made in conjunction with Stevens County Historical Society and Museum and the University of Minnesota Morris.
Static site available for viewing at this link, or at my GitHub page.
Microcosms: An Examination of Insects in 17th-Century Dutch Still Lifes
A paper, art historical analysis, and data organization research project funded by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program award from the University of Minnesota.
Viewable at https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/horizons/vol6/iss2/1/
Publicity
Assessed client needs to produce original publicity posters for various events. Clients included University of Minnesota Morris faculty and Stevens County Historical Society and Museum exhibits.
Music faculty posters for concerts and events
Stevens County Exhibits
Undergraduate Research Symposium
University of Minnesota Morris, Spring 2019
Sharing my research and art with campus.
My work explores humankind’s complicated relationship with the natural world, bringingattention to the sometimes heedless or reckless interactions between humans and insects ornature, and broader issues of a viewer’s role in the environment. Within this larger theme, mysubjects are human figures and insects, separated visually, but related by ideology. Thesehumans are using their smartphones (their bodies are slouching, necks bent awkwardly), butwhere their dead-looking eyes would be, are a species of fungi called cordyceps. The cordycepsfungus doesn’t infect humans in real life but is parasitic on insects. The fungus attacks andinvades the host, much like the way smartphones invade every aspect of our lives and body.Conversely, the insects in this series are “squished”--a common action performed by us humans--but painted large-scale in intricate detail to confront the viewer with a viscerally offensive imageyet intriguing quality of beauty. My work process is to gather photographic imagery, whetherfrom the internet or my own hand (for the insects, I squash and photograph myself), and paint theimage using gouache for the human figures or watercolor for the squished insects. I’ve chosen toleave the background white; it conveys the cleanliness that as a culture, we wish nature had. I’malso interested in challenging the historical context of water-media as inherently feminine, clean,and aconceptual. My work is trying to say that we need to give more concern and caution to theenvironments we inhabit. To ignore our actions will be ruinous.- Olivia Carlson, 2019