Deb Olsen

When she was 6 years old, Debra was allowed to choose the décor for her bedroom. She chose pink ballerina wallpaper, a pink dotted chenille bedspread, pink and white striped café curtains, and a fuzzy pink rug. Over the years she gave up pink but held onto design and expanded greatly her fabric choices. Debra’s mother and grandmother instilled a love for handmade quilts, though eventually realizing she didn’t have the patience for hand sewing or the repetition of completing a pieced quilt.

Debra attended Montana State in Bozeman, studying Fine Arts and gaining a BS in Landscape Design. Life unfolded as it does, and she worked at many different jobs including making wooden kaleidoscopes with her first husband, managing a greenhouse, returning to the University after becoming a single parent to work in the Residence Life Department, and then with her second husband, moving to British Columbia, owning a Bed and Breakfast on Salt Spring Island. Throughout those years, Debra dabbled in art when she could and created new landscapes on 8 different properties as well as for several clients and friends. Upon retirement in 2012, Debra turned her thoughts and energy to art, joined a couple of fiber groups and fell in love with the many aspects of Fiber Art. While living on Vancouver Island, she participated in the Sidney Fine Arts Show and won Juror’s and People’s Choice awards each of the three years there. She has also exhibited in galleries in Victoria BC, Port Townsend, Seqium, Port Angeles, LaConner and Seattle,Wa, Tillamook, Or, and at D’Art Center, Norfolk, Va. Her work has been published in Quilting Arts Magazine. Debra is an active member in The Peninsula Fiber Artists group.

Having found her way as a mixed media artist, Debra uses fabric, paper, paint, beads, found and repurposed objects, - whatever suits a project. She has come to enjoy 3-dimensional work and relishes the experimentation and challenges in problem solving in that realm. Design exists for her like language or music. Although there may be a finite number of letters or notes, there are seemingly endless ways of combining each to create a new story or cadence, true as well of visual art when working with design elements, techniques and materials. Though not always having a set idea of what to create, she looks to Nature and is inspired and taken by patterns found on rocks, water, trees, plants of all kinds. Birds are fun to observe. Architecture is also interesting to her, from a fence design to a magnificent building or worn and weathered shack, it is forever about pattern, light and color. Sometimes her work tells a story, other times it expresses a mood or emotion, a bit of whimsy. Debra’s hope is always that the observer will take time to slow down, pore over the details and find a bit of pleasure, comfort, or inspiration.

Website: www.itzadebdesign.com