Essential Workers – Covid-19 Virus

Original pastels and giclée prints are available.

Original pastel on paper, 20″ x 29″, framed $1,125

Giclée prints:
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12″ x 16.5″ unframed – $250 shipped

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PBS Newshour CANVAS May 19,2020 Written by Joshua Barajus
…”Workers take every precaution to keep themselves and others safe from the coronavirus in Carolyn Olson’s pastel drawings.
Farmworkers wear face masks and gloves while picking vegetables and fruits. A grocery store worker wipes down shopping carts with disinfectant. A janitor pushes a cleaning cart full of supplies past doctors and nurses at a hospital. Since March, the artist from Duluth, Minnesota, has been paying tribute to all kinds of workers deemed essential during the pandemic.
For their sake, Olson wants the rest of us to do better.
These same workers, unable to work from home, have to come into close contact with scores of people every day. And social distancing isn’t always an option, depending on the work site. In Olson’s first drawing in the series, a child, also wearing gloves and a mask, is within touching distance of a grocery store cashier.
For months, labor advocates have raised alarms about the ways essential workers face heightened risks because of exposure to the virus, but also from complications that could arise from low wages and lack of affordable health insurance.
Olson, a recently retired public school teacher, said the series was inspired by conversations with her two children — one a grocery store cashier, the other a middle school music teacher — about how they are navigating the risks of exposure. Her son, the teacher, is able to stay home from school, but also works at a restaurant and bar as another source of income. That business plans on reopening in June.
“As a parent, I’m just panicked about my kids and panicked about the neighbor’s kids. That’s no way to live,” she told the PBS NewsHour.
That anxiety helped fuel her desire to capture workers’ stories, heard from family and friends or the news. There are so many stories that Olson, a longtime painter, turned into pastels, partly because she’s able to produce more images more quickly than if she were working with oil or gouache….”

Star Tribune May 12, 2020 Written by Richard Chin
“….The Historical Society also recently purchased a pastel drawing by Duluth artist Carolyn Sue Olson depicting a scene in a grocery store in which everyone is wearing masks and gloves.
In a description on the Historical Society’s History Is Now website, Olson said the drawing was inspired by her daughter’s job as a grocery store cashier in the Twin Cities.
It’s the first in a series of pieces Olson is creating called “Essential Workers,” depicting bus drivers, mail carriers, doctors, nurses, janitors, farm workers and trash collectors on the job during the pandemic.
The image of people wearing masks to perform an everyday task “was such a profound piece,” said Historical Society art curator Brian Szott, who said he could envision the drawing being used in a history book years from now. “This is an image that suddenly has entered our consciousness,” he said.”…

Not Leaving the Essential Workers Behind: The Work of Artist Carolyn S. Olson – East Side Freedom Library , November 1, 2022 Written by Jim McKenzie
Essential workers, a term bred by the pandemic itself, deliver what matters most for the ongoing comforting and indeed essential flow of our lives: food, health, safety, sanitation, transportation, basic utilities, much of it visible on the humble city streets of Olson’s world. She shows us “School Food Service Workers,” “Sanitation Workers,” “Warehouse Workers,” a “Laundromat Worker,”—so many fellow citizens whose work the pandemic forced us to recognize is essential. Some even took to calling them heroes, and temporarily paid a little more for their labor. 

Workday Magazine , “It’s Your Job to Die” , December 2022 Written by Amie Stager
“The pursuit of political truth is never a one-time arrival point, but rather, something an artist must belabor again and again with each new iteration expanding on the previous and informing the next.”

Eastside Freedom Library, November 2022 Panel Discussion with Essential Workers

Eastside Freedom Library, November 2022 Artist+Activist discussion with Keith Christensen and Carolyn Olson

PBS Newshour CANVAS, June 17, 2020, Reported by Jeff Brown
American artists of all kinds are responding to the pandemic with new creations. As Jeffrey Brown reports, the art can serve as both a call to action and a means of healing — for maker and audience alike. The story is part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/connecting-through-art-when-a-pandemic-keeps-us-apart

Perfect Duluth Day Written by Brian Barber
Carolyn Olson (featured previously in Selective Focus) has been redirecting her work a bit. Still focused on everyday scenes, she has been making drawings in a series she’s calling Essential Workers. These scenes are in grocery stores, public transit, street scenes and in medical facilities. This week, Carolyn talks about honoring these people who keep things going in unprecedented circumstances.