Dan Olfe

Dan Olfe Julian, California

An artful journey often starts with a simple first step. When Dan Olfe and his wife, Julie, moved into a new contemporary house with many white walls, they commissioned an artist friend, Susanne Flowers, to make a quilt for their living room. That first quilt enlivened the walls, and it struck a note within Olfe. Since he had recently retired from a career as an engineering professor, he had both time and interest to create art quilts for the other walls.

Today, just as he did at the outset of his journey in 1997, Olfe brings his computer acumen into play to create art. He updates his approach as technology changes. By utilizing a variety of two- and threedimensional computer programs, he continues to produce unique designs marked by strong graphics and bold color choices.

This artist also has built an impressive exhibition resume. His works have been included in Quilt National,Art Quilt Elements, and a host of other prestigious shows.

Hillcrest Cinemas

39 x 70 inches, 2014

Building blocks of inspiration

Initially I was creating works for our home. Now I’m simply working on designs that excite me.

I am inspired by the colors and shapes of natural and built environments. I produce a series when a single quilt is not sufficient to explore fully the visual possibilities of the design. When I feel that I have produced several good quilts in the series, I move on to another design.

I like to try out new ideas and have many potential designs waiting for completion on my computer. Some of my quilts feature lines by themselves, but in most of

Graffiti #1

39 x 71 inches, 2014

the quilts, lines appear as boundaries of shapes. When quilting, I usually try to follow the straight or curved lines that define the shapes, and fill in the shapes with similar quilt lines.

Technology timeline

I started out 20 years ago making pieced quilts. I created designs on paper using the two-dimensional design programs Adobe Illustrator and Canvas, developed by ACD Systems. I also used AutoCAD when necessary to design special templates for cutting pieces. After a few years, I switched from piecing to painting whole cloth quilt tops in order to put more detail into the designs.

Fourteen years ago, to gain even more complexity, I began having my computer designs digitally printed as whole-cloth tops. I then used three-dimensional modeling and animation software to create models of scenes that could be rendered for the final quilt image.

Six years ago, I switched to simpler technology, using Photoshop to layer photographs. Initially I used textures downloaded from the Internet, but then I started using my own photos when I bought a Nokia cellphone with a camera that takes high-resolution (36 megapixel) photos. My last two quilts were my simplest: single photos of the ocean surface taken with a Samsung camera purchased in 2016.

I will be happy to embrace new technology in the future, but I don’t know what it might be.

Creative process

I like all of the steps in creating a piece, from the initial idea to the construction of the quilt. The processes are similar to academic research. You get an idea based on your previous work or on something you have seen. You experiment with various ways of developing that idea. When you know you have done your best, you send the design out for printing (or in academia, you send a paper out for publishing in a journal).

My quilt San Diego Courthouse #3 was designed from three high-resolution photos I took with my Nokia phone camera of the United States Federal Courthouse building, a new modernist structure. Using Photoshop, I adjusted the perspective of each photo to produce images with straight head-on views, making the lines of the building horizontal and vertical. Next, I layered the three images in a single file. There are more than two dozen ways to combine and blend two layers in Photoshop, and there are many more ways to combine three layers. The brightness, contrast, and other visual aspects of each layer can also be changed to adjust the final image.

The courthouse building is white, so the combined images produced neutral grays. To add color, I changed the neutral color of the bottom image to cyan, resulting in many colors as the cyan combined with the grays above it.

To make quilting easier, I added a grid of thin black lines. These would be covered by black thread during quilting. The final image was sent out for printing to produce a whole cloth top.

My wife says the quilt reminds her of Bauhaus weavings, which is not surprising since the courthouse architect, Richard Meier, designs in the modernist style pioneered by the Bauhaus movement.

This piece was exhibited at Breakout: Quilt Visions 2016 at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego.

San Diego Courthouse #3

70 x 40 inches, 2015

Ocean #2: La Jolla, California

45 x 69 inches, 2016

Work as reward

Perseverance is the main requirement to build a successful exhibition resume. I started out creating a design to fit a particular show topic, but I found the juror’s vision of the topic was different from mine. Now I don’t plan for exhibitions, but create whatever design intrigues me at the moment. After a while my quilts started to be accepted for exhibitions, but I always keep in mind that when my quilts are rejected, it just means that the jurors were looking for something different from what I submitted.

I try to enjoy each day to its fullest, and I make time for the enjoyment of creating art. I welcome any new artistic challenges that I cannot yet predict.

As an introvert, I’m happy that my SAQA membership helps me meet other quilt artists. I find that they are as dedicated and passionate about their art as my former university colleagues were about their research programs. SAQA also affords me the opportunity to be in its exhibitions.

www.danolfe.com

Texture Experiment #23

57 x 57 inches, 2012