{"id":7924,"date":"2024-09-09T18:52:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T18:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artsmidwest.org\/?p=7924"},"modified":"2025-02-20T15:43:04","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T15:43:04","slug":"meet-tim-olson-an-artist-sharing-stained-glass-portraits-of-iowas-icons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsmidwest.org\/stories\/meet-tim-olson-an-artist-sharing-stained-glass-portraits-of-iowas-icons\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Tim Olson, an Artist Sharing Stained-Glass Portraits of Iowa’s Icons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This story was originally published by ia magazine<\/a>, a statewide publication celebrating arts and culture, home and garden, food and dining and destinations in Iowa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a stained-glass studio in Dubuque, the artist Tim Olson is assembling a new body of work \u2014 arms, legs, mustache and all. The puzzle pieces in a recent project formed a glowing Gothic portrait of Dan Gable, Iowa\u2019s patron saint of wrestling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea came from a fan\u2019s suggestion that Olson initially brushed off. \u201cI thought it was such a weird idea because when I was growing up, [Gable] was like Iowa royalty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after taking on the project, the artist created another portrait of Denise Long, the Union-Whitten High School basketball star who became the first woman drafted by the NBA. Then he set to work on portraits of the fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, who grew up in Des Moines, and Cheryl Browne Hollingsworth, who was a student at Luther College when she was crowned Miss Iowa in 1970 and became the first Black contestant in the Miss America pageant.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n \"Two\n\n
\n
\n \n\n\n\n<\/g>\n\n\n\n<\/clipPath>\n<\/defs>\n<\/svg> Photo Credit: Tim Olson<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n
\n Tim Olson\u2019s stained-glass portraits of Denise Long, Dan Gable and other notable Iowans take cues from the Gothic-style windows he helped restore at St. Mary\u2019s Catholic Church in Dubuque. Photo: Tim Olson\n <\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n \n \n <\/figure>\n\n
\n

All four stained-glass portraits will be on display in an exhibition Olson is tentatively calling \u201cThe Hall of Notable Iowans and Other Midwestern Curiosities,\u201d a big solo show scheduled for May 9 through Sept. 15, 2024, at the Sioux City Art Center.<\/p>\n

Most of Olson\u2019s portrait subjects are more ordinary than Olympian, but he\u2019s not one to dismiss a weird idea. In another recent series, the 2022 Iowa Artist Fellow painted modern-day Iowans in the formal style of the Northern Renaissance, led by Flemish artists like Pieter Bruegel and Jan van Eyck. In Olson\u2019s folk-art take, sullen 4-H kids appear in arched panels like the authors of the four Gospels. The Nativity plays out in a trailer-park triptych.<\/p>\n

He appreciates the contrast between fine art and pop culture, like the \u201cfunny, sad and slightly creepy\u201d artwork in a book he discovered years ago, called \u201cThrift Store Paintings.\u201d He likes a good mashup \u2014 and the actual process of mashing things up. Is it \u201cCartoon-Expressionism? Na\u00efve-Academic? Picturesque-Messiness?\u201d he wondered. \u201cMaybe all of the above.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olson grew up in Marathon, near Storm Lake, and graduated from Laurens-Marathon in a class of 60. He studied photography and painting at Bemidji State University, the University of Iowa and Loras College in Dubuque before jumping into a 20-year career as a photo-studio printer in Los Angeles and Chicago.<\/p>\n

When he and his wife, Christine, decided to leave suburban Chicago, they chose Dubuque, where he had studied and she had often visited for her work with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. \u201cShe took to it right away,\u201d Olson said. \u201cIt took me a few years to get a feel for the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n