USA
Tales of Roots & Wings A D I ALO G UE O N AR T, L I F E , AN D LO RE A conversation between artists Olesya Volk and Toti O’Brien Olesya Volk is a Los Angeles-based artist/writer. She was born in Russia where she started doodling, writing, and publishing her tales and puppet plays. She moved to the US in 1992, studied animation at UCLA, and then worked doing web animation and illustrations. In her paintings she explores the patterns of nature, especially the tree bark, as a form of intuitive “readings” of the primordial language. She exhibits her mixed media, dioramas, and paper theatre in L.A. and internationally. She also makes comic books and graphic novels. Toti O’Brien is the Italian accordionist with an Irish last name. She was born in Rome and then moved to Los Angeles, where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician, and professional dancer. Her poetry and prose has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies, in the US and internationally. For a while, Olesya planned on interviewing Toti. Toti wished to interview Olesya sooner than later. Then, what could be more natural than a back-and-forth exchange? A conversation, that is. Topics to be considered were profuse, as the two share a number of interests. But within the context of relaxed, friendly correspondence, the main theme thought it apt to just choose itself.
Toti O’Brien. Let us start from the beginning, shall we? It’s a time and place I like to recall when I think of someone. I like to resuscitate the first impression she or he left on me. Scholars say that in seven seconds we form a fair idea about someone else. I believe it, give or take a second or two. A rough sketch, and yet usually truer than later, more refined opinions. I recall the first time I saw you at the Neutra Gallery, in L.A., leaning by the wall where two of your paintings were hung. Oh my, they were intriguing and beautiful. From a distance I saw complex textures, subtle nuances of muted, natural colors.
Coming close, I identified the tree trunks. I saw bark inhabited by a myriad of beings, a whole crowd of minuscule people. I am familiar with folk tales, elves, fairies, and all kinds of spirits, therefore I recognized them. What surprised me, prompting me to introduce myself, was the fact that you looked a bit like your paintings. Your dress was adorned with knitted lace, black and finely wrought. Your long, dark hair was braided. You were dressed and combed like a kind of fairy, though not in a showy manner. Rather casual. And you smoothed yourself against walls. You hid in corners as your creatures did in the bark.
Also, we were dressed kind of alike. Also, I was dressed a bit like my work, as you later remarked. Then I noticed an oddity, as it comes to art openings. You were nice and affable, easy to befriend in a way that doesn’t belong to show time, not even to adulthood. You were ready to connect as young children are, when they meet at the park. Without preconceptions. We realized that we lived a few blocks away, though far from the place where the Gallery was, which struck me as an interesting pattern… the two close points of origin, where we had never met, and the distant point of arrival where we colluded.
NEW READER MAGAZINE
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