YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Chuck Olson has long been familiar with The Butler Institute of American Art.
He has been visiting it since he was in college and has taken his students there many times during his 40 years as an art professor.
So when he was offered an exhibition in the museum’s Finnegan/Hynes gallery, he was familiar with the space. The narrow but brightly lit gallery is unique because of its soaring walls and skylight.
To make the most of the space and the opportunity, Olson painted 16 massive abstract pieces that complement the room’s attributes.
His exhibition, “Chuck Olson: Paintings from 2010-2024,” opens Sunday and runs through May 18.
Olson remembers sizing up the room on the day he was offered the exhibition in November 2023.
“There is a lifting up that goes on in that room,” he said, “and I thought that I should think about colors that are uplifting. I also wanted things to be on [a grand] scale, because you got 17-foot ceilings in that gallery.”
Olson painted for the next 16 months, producing several large vertical pieces imbued with bright greens and yellows. With the sun pouring in, the gallery becomes a shrine to the spring season.
“It’s a museum show, and a museum show should be about impact,” Olson said, explaining his thought process.
Louis A. Zona, executive director and curator of The Butler, said it’s unusual for an artist to create works for a specific gallery. “It’s an interesting approach,” he said.
Because Olson’s show has 22 pieces, some of which are very large, it also occupies the adjacent Davis Gallery. The smaller and horizontal paintings are in the Davis, which has a lower ceiling.
Olson, who lives in Indiana, Pa., will be at The Butler on Saturday for an invitation-only preview event. He will return Sunday for the public opening and to give a 2 p.m. gallery talk.
A retrospective hardcover book on Olson and his art will be unveiled opening weekend and will be available at the museum store for $70.
The large-size book has 204 pages and more than 140 plates. It features a foreword by Zona and a 20-page essay by Pittsburgh-based art historian and curator Vicky A. Clark.
“Olson approaches the blank canvas with intellectual curiosity and childlike wonder,” Clark wrote in her essay.
In his foreword, Zona said Olson presents abstraction in an entirely new light.
“Abstraction by its very nature is problematic in that few clues are available to the viewers to grasp full understanding of what is before them,” Zona wrote. “But artists as inventive as Olson, in so many ways, offer us so much more than representational art ever could.”
When he’s not painting, the artist plays in a cover band. He has performed with many Pittsburgh-area rockers, including The Clarks, Joe Grushecky, Rick Witkowski (Crack the Sky) and Jim Donovan (Rusted Root), and expects all or most of them will be on hand for Saturday’s event.
He and The Butler’s team have also discussed his band performing at a future event.
Olson received his master’s degree in painting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1976. He was the chairman and professor of fine art at Saint Francis University (Loretto, Pa.) until 2019.
He directed a university arts and language program in Parma, Italy, for 12 years.
Olson has had numerous one-person and group exhibitions from Pittsburgh to New York City, and internationally in France, Italy and Germany. His work is in many private and public collections, including Double Tree Hotel Corp., PPG Industries, The Tomayko Foundation and Westinghouse Corp.
Pictured at top: Chuck Olson in his studio.