Not Leaving the Essential Workers Behind: The Work of Artist Carolyn S. Olson

A review from Jim McKenzie

The word “portrait” suggests the image of an individual, usually a prominent woman or man–persons of some historical, political, or social renown: bodies, busts, or faces suitable for inclusion on currency or ornately framed in galleries. Carolyn S. Olson’s latest work, 100 profoundly engaging, colorful pastels collected in a catalogue, Essential Worker Portraits, is anything but that.

Her subjects are first and foremost workers. No fewer than 44 of these 100 paintings use the word in their titles. An early portrait, #5 (from March, 2020, beginning pandemic time) unites “Doctors, Nurses, and Janitor” under that root word connecting them all: “Hospital Workers.” There are no euphemisms in Olson’s titles; no name-tag abstractions either—“sales associate,” “team member,” or other all too familiar, undignifying corporate jargon. 

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. 

Her subject selections and even her titles for paintings invite viewers to consider more deeply the unfinished work of democracy. Portrait #7 shows masked “First Responders,” loading an eyes-shut patient on a respirator into an ambulance. “Pieta of the Uninsured,” her subtitle reads, combining sacred Christian imagery with a still gaping hole in our healthcare “system.” A few portraits later we encounter “Election Judges.” One unrolls red “I Voted” circles near a hijab-wearing voter. Their shape and color alone signal their purpose; there are no words. Olson weighs words carefully, rarely using them in her portraits themselves. So when we see words on paintings, they carry more weight. 

Several portraits after “Election Judges” we encounter another kind of work essential for democracy, the peaceable assemblage for redress of grievances. In this case, a piece called “Protesters,” the occasion is the police murder of George Floyd. Most prominent, bottom left, are three marchers carrying a “UNITY” banner. Other signs read “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” “No Justice No Peace,” “MMIW” for Murdered and Missing Indian Women. A red hand streams across the mask of the protester carrying that placard, suggesting bloody efforts to silence even her mention of such violence.

Later still, Portrait #28, we see an image showing another important feature of democracy, solidarity across what sometimes seem isolated interest groups. Only ten of Olson’s portraits feature a solitary worker, but this one has the most people—27, all masked, some also wearing face shields above their hospital blues. Two raise white-gloved fists, another extends two arms in a V above her head, hoisting aloft her NURSES AGAINST RACISM sign. But a banner held by four protesters, “WHITE COATS 4 BLACK LIVES,” Olson’s title for the piece, stretches across the entire portrait. A single medical worker at the very edge is neither behind nor in front of the banner, though she holds her own placard. 

Carolyn Olson refers to herself as a narrative painter, a useful description both for individual works and Essential Worker Portraits as a whole. The book follows the strong, familiar-to-all-of-us-narrative arc of the pandemic. The collection’s last page sequences her paintings by the month they were created, March 2020 through July 2021. The cover enlarges a detail from the book’s first image, “Grocery Store Cashiers and Baggers,” surely one of the earliest “essential” workers ordinary Americans encountered during the disruptions of those early times. Spring and early summer 2020 portraits feature numerous spray bottles. Two pieces use the phrase “Disinfection Worker” in their titles, a work category much harder to imagine before that time, and an activity that became less prominent as scientists learned the most prevalent way the virus spread.

A year later, Olson’s narrative gives us that lift so many felt, briefly, before it got sucked into polarized political confrontation: vaccinations. First (January 2021) we see a nurse injecting a doctor, both women; then, in a succession that mirrors society’s priorities, Grocery Store Worker, Teachers, and Bus Drivers; finally, last in this particular subject run—more than a month later (April)–shoppers in a mall. 

Though Olson works out of Duluth, and the reference to George Floyd protests suggest strong Twin Cities connections, it’s important to remember that Floyd’s murder, like the pandemic, stirred humanity everywhere. Wikipedia required 67 pages just to enumerate and describe the protests around the world that lead to changes in existing public art and monuments.  The PBS News Hour’s Jeffrey Brown (June 17, 2020) used Olson’s early work to anchor a closing segment on a variety of artist responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Thanks to Olson and the East Side Freedom Library, we bring this narrative back home. On Sunday, November 6, at 1 p.m., ESFL will host Essential Workers (Artist-Activist Conversation) which will open an exhibit of her work and feature a conversation between her and artist Keith Christensen. The following Sunday, November 13, ESFL will host Essential Workers Panel Discussion, also at 1 p.m. Both events will be virtual and accessible on Zoom.