“Installation: What A Time To Be Alive“
The Tippecanoe Arts Federation November 2025 exhibition in the Truitt Gallery titled “Installation: What a Time To Be Alive” features more than 40 drawings of vases by Loren Olson, in graphite and powdered pigments. Hung as high on the wall as possible, these vases change the relationship of the image to the viewer and ask to be seen together, as one. Although each drawing stands on its own, their effect together is at the heart of this installation. The repeated vase shapes, with singular and overlapping silhouettes, were not a limitation but offered the artist freedom to explore a simple language: an interior, an exterior and the boundary between. Therein lies much mystery in life. The artist invents her own techniques to serve her expressive intentions. She explores experience by the marks she makes and through all the shades of grey between black and white, as well as color. On view from Friday, November 7, (opening from 6-8 pm) through November 27, 2025.
Born in San Jose, California in 1951, the artist, Loren Olson, moved with her family to Illinois in 1958, and West Lafayette, Indiana in 1964. In 1966 the family began living in the house restructured by Sculptor John Lewis which sadly no longer exists but was like living in a work of art. Following her graduation from W Lafayette Sr HS, she attended Immaculate Heart College (LA, California) in the program created by artist Corita Kent. Olson traveled through Europe, married her companion, lived in Dallas and Lubbock, Tx until the artist returned to West Lafayette and divorced in the 70’s. Having a studio at 510 Columbia in Lafayette, the artist met Al Pounders, painter and Purdue Professor who became Olson’s second husband. Their travels were seminal for both their careers with exhibitions and inspiration, including in New York City, the Caribbean, and Italy where they exhibited together for the first time in 2000.
Olson’s career includes art objects made at Twinrocker Handmade Paper Mill (Brookston, IN) shown and represented in NY City. Her first installation “Torn Emblems” in Fort Wayne, IN in 1984, became the setting for a dance in the Loeb Theater at Purdue University in 1989. The Fort Wayne Museum of Art showed her light boxes and first video art in 2012, which became “Being and Becoming in a Field of Resonance” at the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, IN in 2015. Her career includes other solo and two person shows, juried and invitational group shows, merit awards, and a fellowship show.
Her work has been represented by Patrick King and Mark Ruschman Galleries in Indianapolis, IN. among others. She has produced drawings, collages, watercolors and oils, sometimes mixed together. Falling in love with Umbria, Italy, both artists were deeply influenced. Al Pounders became known as an Italian Landscape Painter and Olson developed her work based on Greek and Etruscan vases, inspired by many great collections in Umbria, other parts of Italy, London and Paris. The two returned often to Umbria until their last visit in 2016. Their last show: Loren Olson and Al Pounders: Visions of Space and Form was at the John Natsoulas Center for the Arts, Davis, California in 2017. The artists lived and worked together until Pounders’ passing in 2019. Olson returns to the local art scene with ”Installation: What a Time To Be Alive” at the Tippecanoe Arts Federation, Lafayette, In. November 2025.
To Learn More About the Artist and Her Work:
https://www.jconline.com/story/entertainment/arts/2015/10/28/inspired-tragedy-artist-captures-human-spirit/74741788/
https://fwmoa.org/exhibition/challenging-the-figure-works-by-loren-olson/
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/contributor/loren-olson/
