Rik Olson - Sonoma County Artiste Par Excellence
Rik Olson, a man with great presence and with joviality etched on his face, thrusts out a welcoming hand en route to his studio. It is a surprisingly atmospheric setting with clusters of specialized tools, shelves of old books on his chosen arts, unfinished paintings leaning against walls, several presses--even an unusable mid-1800s press missing teeth. “Anything surviving from the mid-1800’s is allowed to have missing teeth,” he quips, eyes twinkling.
Drawers hold blocks of wood engravings and metal plates. Stacks of linocuts are plopped unceremoniously in stacks. “Wood engravings and plates are in drawers, because a scratch would damage them,” he explains. “Linocuts aren’t delicate. They’re a special linoleum composition for battleship decks and are relatively indestructible. I could use them for years, but I don’t. I only do a single edition of my prints.”
Glancing around, he muses, “I escape to my studio several hours a day to explore and give free reign to my creative urges. This was my man cave long before that expression existed.” The space holds Rik’s history as an artist. There is a path through it all, but, essentially, no spot remains unoccupied. Yet it feels cozy, rather than cluttered.
In addition to fine art, Rik does editorial illustration, packaging and book illustration, art spots, event posters, wine labels, and other niche items. The Sierra Club used his logo for a quarter century before replacing it. A piece for Walter Reed National Military Medical Center commemorated a new hospital wing. His art is on the back cover of every issue of the Gazette, custom illustrations for Fine Tree Care. He has done a decal for The Bohemian’s Best of Sonoma County awards and posters for Sebastopol’s Apple Blossom Festival and for the town of Occidental, even for Main Street Days, in Grapevine, TX, and an event in Puerto Rico, with other commissions from Mexico, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Japan.
Rik enjoys the challenge of commissions. Asked if one had ever gone wrong, he grins, “I’ve been fired. Trying to produce work matching someone else’s vision ensures there are differences to iron out. All in all, it has been a positive experience.” Currently Rik is doing illustrations for a book of poetry and designing several wine labels.
Internationally, Rik is a recognized master in several printmaking mediums, but a single skill underlies them all. “The ability to draw Is essential whether I use a pen, pencil, knife, or other sharp object. Interestingly, I work in opposites. In pen and ink illustrations, I add lines on paper to create an image. With the wood engravings, linocuts, and scratchboard, I carve out the negative space and leave the positive image. I also think in reverse, since a figure carved on the left will be on the right when printed. I like to say I do anything that includes sharp instruments and a dab of ink.”
Asked how he fixes a mistake, given the complexity of carving various mediums, Rik’s face crinkles into an amused smile. “It’s never a mistake...it’s a re-design opportunity.”
Rik explains his mediums. “Wood engraving is most difficult, then mezzotints. Linocuts are easiest. I transfer a drawing to a surface, whether wood, linoleum, metal plate, or scratchboard, as a map for where to carve or incise. With wood engravings, I work across the endgrain of a block, which allows me to achieve precise work with very fine details. Wood engraving and linocuts are relief works. A simple example is a rubber stamp with ink on the raised parts.
Linocuts, if printed in color, require a block per color. If yellow roses are in the drawing, one block will have everything cut away but the yellow parts, another will retain only green parts, etc. With each color printed separately, the paper passes through the press multiple times, each block adding its segment, with the end result being the image as originally conceived.
“Etchings use a copper or zinc plate coated with a resist layer that I draw through with an etching needle to expose the metal. The plate goes into an acid bath that eats into the metal, producing the image. With mezzotints, I put the copper plate on a rotating board, a device I developed, and, with a specialized tool, score the metal surface from 54 slightly differing angles, giving the ink hundreds of minuscule burrs to pool around. This can create quite a moody background or allow for a variety of shadings and texture—no acid involved.”
“Scratchboard, ‘the poor man’s wood engraving look’, is economical—a black-ink surface baked onto a white clay layer on a backing. I scratch away the ink with sharp tools. The black and white incised board is itself the final work, although it can be photographed or scanned to make prints.” The arresting image on the March cover of The Sonoma County Gazette 2018 Gardener's Resource Guide is a scratchboard rendition. In this case, Rik scanned the carved image into the computer and added color digitally. “I don’t title commissioned work, but this image is composed of California natives, so that could be the title.”