The Rage Garden

Hi! My name is Olivia, and I'm a professional artist doing my best to build a better world out of joy and rage.

Follow this account for my hand-drawn art and hopecore clothing.

See here for all shops and social media: https://linktr.ee/okhismakingart

Location #2 for hidden artwork. Give it your guesses if you please. First three places to be revealed within the week. ❤️✨️

So I'd alluded to TWO projects coming soon, and here's the second one. I ordered mini prints of my original six pieces from the Revisited / Transported series, and I am hiding them in six different cities. If you know me, and you're local, you can guess three out of the six, (which will come later).

But first, we're starting further away. If anyone can guess the first location from just the photo below, I'll confirm, but otherwise, I will reveal the first three cities in about a week! ❤️🏚🌸

I collaged them. :)

THREE OUT OF THREE COMPLETE. I was working up pretty close to the deadline for submission for the Staunton Augusta Art Center's open call for photography/photography-based work, and I was working even closer to my own personal deadline of having to leave for a trip soon.

But they're done: Three new pieces in the Revisited Series, so named because adding an abstract flower garden to each of these abandoned structures requires revisiting them, and by "planting" these flowers, I am trying to assert that it is valuable to do so; that these buildings deserve to be revisited, and hopefully, someday, repaired.

Cross your fingers that these make it into the exhibition. ❤️

Find all three new pieces below:

Askew House Revisited: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/182179447

Railroad Depot Revisited: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/182179488

And here's where they'll be through the end of July! My abstract flower sculptures have been planted in Art Hive Collective - a much better environment really. They're native to maximalism.

If you've never been, they are also an art supply resale store with all kinds of one-of-a-kind supplies that have been donated - sewing patterns, books, stamps, fabric, paint, you name it! If you turn down past the Royal Station near Gypsy Hill Park, you'll find them a short ways down on the right. :)

Since I've got some new followers, I thought it'd be nice to introduce myself.

Hi, I'm Olivia, and make fine art (drawing, sculpture, photography), modified clothing (my hopecore take on streetwear), and anything else my heart desires (I've natural-dyed clothing, made jewelry, worked with salt dough, etc.).

Here is where I post my clothing, drawings, and sculpture.

@oliviahathawayphotography is where I post my photography just because it's such a huge body of work, especially compared to the sculptures and hand-drawn work.

There is also crossover between the two! This summer's new body of work is a set of crossovers between my photography and abstract flower drawings.

I'm an overall unserious person who is very serious about art - both luxuries of being finished with college. My degrees are in biochemistry and biology, and they did not leave me much time to be unserious or creative.

I primarily sell my work through in-person venues, art shows, my Etsy shop, and my two Redbubble stores (one for drawings, one for photography, both means for me to offer affordable prints at scale).

My Etsy is here: https://theragegarden.etsy.com

Some of my clothing is currently for sale in Made; By the People, For the People in Staunton!

My flower sculptures and clothing were part of Staunton Augusta Art Center's Art on The Town (which was in Gypsy Hill Park in May).

My flower sculptures are about to be featured in... a location very near Gypsy Hill Park. 😉

These are the flyers I was giving out about my work on Friday. I had meant to include these in the protest photo album but forgot. If you'd like to know more about what happened or what motivates my work, see below!

Also: AMAZING NEWS! Another local art venue reached out to me yesterday offering to show my work, and I have excitedly accepted. You all will know where my flowers are going by Thursday evening, but here's your first hint: This place is an objectively way more appropriate environment for my flowers than The Artisans Loft.

So this happened in the evening on July 3rd, but I didn't want to post personal drama on America's birthday.

I decided to participate in the tradition of the Impressionists who were rejected by the Paris Salon and then set up their own exhibition across the street and on National Disobedience Day, apparently.

Like I relayed to the gallery owner (Ellen Boden) when she told me (through her curator - never spoke to me directly) that I either had to switch out my sculptures for paintings or photography: I had already invited more than a dozen people to the show, and they were expecting to see these pieces. So I decided they would.

This piano is right next to the door to the gallery, so I sat there for about an hour handing out flyers about my work and how I got kicked out of the show after I'd already been accepted. Would've stayed longer, but it was an emergency heat advisory, and I didn't want the folks who came out to support me risking a heat stroke in solidarity.

The main show didn't have a huge turnout (based on past shows I've attended), which was probably also due to the heat, but even if no one had talked to me, it was important just to be there. A certain magnitude of disrespect requires a certain magnitude of response.

I also went upstairs to the main show itself because the other artists who were not forced to remove their work deserved appreciation and attention, including a friend who had three pieces in the show.

Some observations from that:

1) The first reason I was given that my work "didn't fit the show" and therefore must be picked up is that it was "craft" (not art). The description of the gallery online says they sell "fine crafts."

2) The second reason I was given was that my work wasn't in the price range they wanted for the show. That should've been a business conversation btw, I can increase my mark-up to make it worthwhile for the gallery if that's the issue, but I price my work lower than I'd like on purpose because I want people to be able to afford my pieces. We don't live in NYC or LA. Also that wasn't true! There were other works in the show in the same price range as mine.

3) A lot of the work up there has been there for years. Probably 5+.

4) A lot of the pieces were the gallery owner's own pieces. Including a few I recognize from almost 10 years ago.

In short, what I've gathered from my own observations + confirmation from other folks who've shown in the gallery before is that she has a hard time finding people who want to show their work in her space and has to include a lot of old pieces and/or her own work to keep the space filled. I wonder why.

Last thing I did before I left is leave her one of my asshole art business cards. First official usage, and yet I knew I'd need them. That's the fine art world for ya. 🤷‍♀️

Back to our regularly scheduled program for a bit. My clothing and sculptures both run on the same vibes of joy and rage.

Behold: A shirt for people who read the news and do something about it. Folks who feed their neighbors, sign petitions, go to town council meetings, vote, and/or take direct action on issues themselves.

Eventually you've just got to decide bad things aren't allowed in your neighborhood, whether that's food insecurity, voter intimidation, violence, etc. 🤷‍♀️

So one person online said they could see the gallery owner's point about these being "craft" because I use pipecleaners for the stems. While I understand that perspective, here are my thoughts on that:

Does adding a "non-fine art" material to something that would otherwise be fine art make it not fine art? Andy Warhol stacked the Brillo boxes. Brillo boxes aren't art material at all, much less fine art material, and yet.

"Well those are in the kids' craft section."

You can also get clay in the kids's craft section, which is a pretty common and accept artistic medium.

"Well that's not fine art clay."

Okay then these ARE fine art pipecleaners.

"Kids use those in Art Class."

What class? Not Craft Class. Kids also make paintings and clay pots, so I guess the whole genres of painting and pottery are out of the fine art world.

Wire is a generally accepted artistic medium, either by itself as sculpture or as a structural component to other works. Add color and fuzz to it, and it's no longer a fine art material? Interesting. Art hates color?

"Well pipecleaners are easy to get." So is wire. I can get that in any gauge I want at my local ACE Hardware. So is everything - we live in the age of ordering things online.

"Well it's a cheap material." Oh, so we're admitting fine art intentionally has a monetary barrier to entry then, and it's more about money than skill and creative forethought?

I went to a large installation of animal sculptures that were carved out of discarded flip flops once. Discarded flip flops? Those cost $0.

"But that had meaning because it was a commentary on ocean litter and the animals it affects!"

Cool, my sculptures are a commentary on creating joy from what's available and people turning their noses up at that because of arbitrary preconceived notions about what is meaningful and worthy of attention.

Alright, so here's what happened. To be clear, in the screenshots below, I'm communicating with Anita, who is the art show director for The Artisans Loft, and she is an angel. It is the owner, however, who has behaved so unprofessionally that I will NEVER exhibit work with them again.

I reached out to The Artisan's Loft at the beginning of this month to ask if they had any interest in my new body of work: My abstract flower sculptures. Anita replied very excitedly that she'd like to see them, so I took time off in the middle of my work day to bring them downtown.

She was overjoyed with my work and said she thought they'd be perfect for the show and that she was happy because they'd never had anything like them in the gallery before.

Then this week, I received the first email below letting me know that though she had accepted my work, the owner (Ellen Boden) had overruled her and decided that my work was not fine art but "craft," and if I wanted to be in the show, I needed to swap out my work for paintings or photography.

If you're not familiar with the "art vs. craft" debate, you're living in a beautiful paradise and should stay there, but the summary is that "craft" has been used by art critics and gallery owners to consistently devalue certain art forms. This is very prevalent in the fiber arts community because "it's craft not art" is very often wielded against practioners of art made via traditionally feminine skills like sewing, though here, it's just being used more broadly to avoid coming out and saying that Ellen doesn't recognize my sculptures as fine art.

There is a definitive answer to the "art vs. craft" debate and that is that "craft" is a what people call art forms they don't respect as fine art when they want their personal opinions to sound like they carry institutional weight.

I'm okay with people not liking my art. I'm okay with being rejected from galleries; I'm not entitled to space in anybody's venue. What I'm absolutely NOT okay with is being kicked out of a show and asked to take my work back a week before the opening because apparently Ellen thinks my work is so subpar that she'd rather burn a bridge with a local artist than honor the decision of her art director or the venue's agreement with me (I signed their paper with the descriptions of my pieces, prices for my works, and agreement to their sales terms, which they are calling "an application" but which I disagree with given that I filled it out *after* I was told my work had been accepted).

The fourth image below is the invite I had already sent to 50+ friends, family, and coworkers and had posted on social media weeks ago. There's at least a dozen people who were expecting to see my work this weekend. If you were planning to go, there will still be an opportunity to see my work this, but it is now by private invite, so please send me a DM if you're interested.

P.S. I have it from another artist who is also no longer a fan of The Artisan's Loft that this show has already been delayed twice, and yet the gallery owner still thinks nothing of kicking an artist a week before the show.

I have never been so disrespected, and it will not happen again. I sent $300+ of these to a buyer in California in March. There's nothing I need from a place that would waste so much of my time and disappoint supporters of my work.