Artist Statement 

Having experienced a childhood of poverty and religious over-discipline, I appreciate iconoclasts and rule breakers.  I love superheroes – not for their superpowers, but for their ability to overcome and shine despite the damage in their various back stories.  Filtered through my personal narrative, I explore what it means to be human, fallible, damaged, and yet victorious, even heroic.  I want to create a space where superheros pratfall, robots leer and grin, and imaginary creatures invite you into their world. 

My ceramic sculptures are painterly, colorful, mysterious, but friendly.  I love to create imaginary bees, worms, and insects as charming reminders of how much we need and love our essential pollinators. With this work, my wish is to inspire people to cultivate native plants and nurture our pollinators.  Another favorite sculpture subject – robots – mixes humanity with technology, and invites us to consider our relationship with AI.  Rather than cold precision, my robots are psychedelic, charming, dirty, inept, and hoping for empathy. My ceramics have an intentionally handmade quality - glazed in colorful, painterly passages and then subjected to multiple firings. Glazes bubble, melt, and crack, spilling over the form, indicating vibrancy and vulnerability.

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Jade Olson is a painter and sculptor. She worked in the field of law in New York for 20 years and created art as a self-taught artist during that time. Eventually her passion for art moved her to change her career and attend art school. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics and Painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Olson lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.

Representation:

TAG Gallery, Boston, MA

Blue Raven Gallery, Rockland, Maine

Associate Member of Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA