- http://denverarts.org/other_exhibits/margaret_pettee_olsen_at_the_ucf_center_for_emerging_media Nov 1, 2015
Excerpts from some reviews and related coverage:
Ucross Foundation Names Artists in Residence for Spring 2019
Entrance to the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming.
COURTESY UCROSS FOUNDATION
The Ucross Foundation, a nonprofit arts organization in Clearmont, Wyoming, has announced the 54 visual artists, writers, performers, and composers who will participate in its Spring fellowship program. The recipients, selected from a pool of 400 applicants, will live and work at the foundation’s 20,000-acre ranch on residencies ranging from two to six weeks.
Among the visual artists selected are Zoë Charlton, Joanna Keane López, Mark Ritchie, and Brooke Steiger. Marquee names on the list include Cheryl Strayed, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Wild, and comedian Hannah Gadsby, whose Netflix special Nanette features mentions of art-historical figures like Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso.
Members of the Spring cohort come from 17 states, as well as Athens and parts of the United Kingdom. Seven of the artists, including Gadsby, spent three weeks in February at Ucross for the 2019 Sundance Institute Playwrights and Composer Retreat.
Sharon Dynak, the president of the foundation, said in a statement, “Ucross is honored to support an exceptional roster of artists at varying stages of their careers. These spring residencies reflect [founder] Raymond Plank’s legacy and our commitment to nurturing creative individuals who are making such an impact on contemporary culture.”
The list of Spring 2019 artists in residence follows below.
Visual Arts
Jarrod Beck
Rhona Bitner
Heidi Brandow
Zoë Charlton
Mateo Galvano
Laura Tanner Graham
Lisa Hochstein
Ann Kresge
Joanna Keane López
Carolyn Monastra
Margaret Pettee Olsen
Barbara Pearsall
Anne Austin Pearce
Mark Ritchie
Brooke Steiger
Cara Tomlinson
Karen VanceMusic & Dance
Taylor Ho Bynum
Carmel Dean
Victoria Haggblom
Daniel Kellogg
John Kelly
Ginger Krebs
Pamela Madsen
Matthew Dean Marsh
Dave Munsick
Leah Reid
Glen WhiteheadLiterature
Susan C. Briante
Yalitza Ferreras
Nikki A. Greene
Vernita Hall
Scott Hutchins
Roger King
Lisa Ko
Helen Elaine Lee
Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Yxta Maya Murray
Amy Parker
Ashley Robinson
Isabella Spann
Cheryl Strayed
Anika Streitfeld
Mika Taylor
Alia Volz
Karen McCarthy WoolfTheatre
Nathan Alan Davis
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
Hannah Gadsby
Philip Himberg
Michael R. Jackson
Yasmina Reggad
Raquel Salas Rivera
Alix Sobler
Copyright 2019, Art Media ARTNEWS, llc. 110 Greene Street, 2nd Fl., New York, N.Y. 10012. All rights reserved.
“RELAY: Paintings by Margaret Pettee Olsen — The paintings of Margaret Pettee Olsen speak to our visual culture in which we are inundated with imagery on computer screens, smart phones, high-definition televisions, and other devices of what the artist calls our “media-driven version of experience.” Informed by abstract traditions, she ventures into new territory with the latest developments in pigments and with a sensibility that taps into the turbulence of our times. ” –Stephanie Grillli Phd, Yale, Art Historian, Nov 1, 2018
Fun inclusion: 1001 MODERN ARTISTS YOU SHOULD KNOW is an anonymous list (though likely developed by conceptual artist: Allan McCollum) of artists that are considered noteworthy today. All the artists on the list appear to be women, save McCollum. Allan McCollum creates installations that address ideas of uniqueness amidst large numbers. For the complete list of artists, please visit the following link: http://artarchives.net/artists/modern_artists.html?fbclid=IwAR05Fo6NJFqSLlppuSzzAn4D2pi7ExdGuZHf859ubfXZrkjBxLaYouLWMOw
“When First Friday collides with Denver Arts Week on Friday, November 2, it will create an explosion of exhibition openings, $52.80 art deals at galleries all over town and, as it happens, Día de los Muertos street celebrations connected to artwalks in the Santa Fe Drive and 40 West arts districts. On Saturday, November 3, take advantage of DAW’s Night at the Museums to visit the Denver Art Museum, the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, the Clyfford Still Museum and the Byers-Evans House Museum gallery in the Golden Triangle, as well as the close-by Museo de las Americas, all for free. You’ll also find plenty of art to explore in RiNo and other regional art districts. But just in case you’re still confused about where you want to land this weekend, here are some standout stops.”
– Susan Froyd,–Westword, A Village Voice magazine covering the west, Nov 1, 2018
“Margaret Pettee Olsen, an abstract painter with a background in limited-edition lithography, brings a printmaker’s ethos into her work, which consists of polymer-layered canvases that are painted in broadly brushed swaths of organic tangles, drips and markings she calls “edits.” See Pettee Olsen’s latest at this exhibition curated by Denver art writer Stephanie Grilli. ” –Susan Froyd, Art critic, WestWord –A Village Voice publicaton
…Stand out two-venue exhibit, Made In Colorado features artists who have working studios in the state. Pictured below on opening night is internationally renowned curator, Olga Viso and Artist/Publisher Cameron Keith Gainer, in front of, “TMI with Red Edits”. The two created the survey that celebrates “the best contemporary art in the state”. Jeff Lambson of Emmanuel Gallery, and Wayne Rogers of 808 Projects, are directors of the participating venues respectively. “TMI with Red Edits” (below), installed at 808 Projects in the arts district in downtown Denver. June 7th – July 30th
Pictured here: Opening night with Olga Viso and Cameron Keith Gainer with Margaret Pettee Olsen’s, painting, “TMI with Red Edits” installed on the north wall of the gallery.
— 808 Projects
“Pettee Olsen’s series of large scale canvases mimic the vacancy of digital overlays using only paint and the incredibly emotive hands of the painter herself.”— Elizabeth Lee, Arts writer, Art New England, Nov, 2016
Art (Breaking Glass) 
Courtesy of the Center for Visual Art/MSUD Margaret Pettee Olsen,”Vortex.”
“Women artists, long victims of the grip of critical subjugation, are beginning to get their due, thanks in part to groundbreaking exhibitions like Gwen Chanzit’s Women of Abstract Expressionism at the Denver Art Museum. With a national show of that scope on the local lineup, Cecily Cullen of Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Center for Visual Art decided to do something similar for Colorado’s healthy contingent of female abstractionists, and Westword critic Michael Paglia, a scholar of abstract art with a unique knowledge of who’s who in the state, was the clear choice to curate the CVA’s satellite exhibit. The result, Colorado Women in Abstraction, opens with a reception at 6 p.m. on July 15.” — Susan Froyd, Art critic, WestWord –A Village Voice publicatoin http://www.westword.com/event/colorado-women-in-abstraction-7923758
Margaret Pettee Olsen at the UCF Center for Emerging Media
“File Not Found, Gallery EOSS, “Pettee Olsen is an accomplished painter whose brushwork offers much to contemplate and absorb. Her large canvases are blatantly abstract but so rich in color, texture and gesture that one finds traces of the figurative. Her mark-making evokes image-editing software with graphic overlays, howling blank space, and chaotic trails of paint that weave sometimes fluidly, sometimes jarringly, through one another…. Pettee Olsen layers paint until it achieves a kind of controlled chaos, eventually approximating the feeling of what she calls a “media-driven version of experience.”
“… In this intriguing show, Kane and Pettee Olsen search for new forms to host the wild hordes of zeroes and ones we encounter in our daily lives.” — Alexander Castro freelance journalist and arts writer, Attleboro, Mass.
“…Margaret seems to draw from art history itself…from the caves of Lascaux to the canvases of Pollock. You can also trace her roots as a one-time dancer and print maker (for the likes of Motherwell, De Kooning and Stella). She builds intriguing surfaces by impregnating the work with metal pigment, creating pieces that are deep, light reactive, lush and rich, with a commanding scale and color range.” — Patrick J Hamilton, Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W 18th Street, New York, New York
“Pettee Olsen’s abstractions use reflective pigments, creating color-shifting surfaces which change depending on the light and the viewer’s perspective. …the artist records entries and departures of movement through these worlds through her handling of the paint with brush and other, more discreet methods of application, inviting the viewer to enter in.” — Published on October 27, 2010, for UCF – Center for Emerging Media – Studio Art and Computer Gallery, 500 West Livingston Street, Orlando, FL
© Margaret Pettee Olsen 2019