Museum: Nudes: Erotic, Poetic and Patterned at WEAM
Candid about his approach to art as a distinctly personal mission, the reclusive artist, writer and poet, Norman J. Olson who currently resides in Maplewood, Minnesota, will step forward for a rare exhibit of 17 original prints and paintings when “Nudes: Erotic, Poetic and Patterned,” made its South Florida debut this month at Naomi Wilzig’s World Erotic Art Museum.
An artist whose images have been reproduced in publications throughout the world, Olson has achieved legendary underground status through his visuals which, because of his decades of work in the press room of the Webb Publishing Company created a personal climate in a job that demanded he put rolls of paper on a giant printing press. As the rolls ran down, Olson used the brief leisure time to learn how to draw…a process which created a world in which Olson viewed time as a prison in which he chose to make drawings just to get through the shift.
As a result, the underlying premise of Olson’s work, “my art is like prison art,” calls upon his supposition that the puritanical history of America has in its wake created a society that is obsessed with sex, and for himself, “an endless fascination with naked people.” With the nude as the subject for his art, Olson nonetheless declares, “my work is sensual; it is seldom sexual.”
To Go: The World Erotic Art Museum is located at 1205 Washington Ave; The exhibit runs through Friday, August 26. WEAM is open Monday through Thursday, 11am to 10pm; Friday and Saturday, 11am to Midnight. Admission is $15, no one under 18 admitted. For info: 305-532-9336 or www.weam.com
