Benjamin B. Olshin presents...CANNED ART

The show will run at the Gladwyne Library from December 2nd through December 31st. The gallery is on display during the library's hours of operation.

This exhibition, for the Lower Merion Library System, is entitled "Canned Art" and features selections from a series of pieces that are indeed "canned art" — recycled metal food cans are used to "host" small scenes, constructed with watercolor, craft paper, and other materials. The pieces use irony (e.g., in the "canned fish" works) and humor, combined with playing with scale and material choices, to engage viewers and ask them to think further about how art can appear in many settings and contexts.

Examples from the series as a whole - https://benjaminbolshin.net/experimental-work-1

About the Author:

Benjamin B. Olshin Bio:

Benjamin B. Olshin was born in the United States but has spent much of his life abroad. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design program in Rome, doing a series of watercolor paintings and drawings there. After graduating from Williams College, he attended Surrey, England, where he taught watercolour painting, calligraphy, and crafts. Later, while living in Portugal, the American Cultural Center in Lisbon exhibited his watercolor paintings and pen-and-ink sketches. He returned to Portugal some years later on a Fulbright grant, researching and attending A.R. C.O. (Centro de Arte e Comunicaçâo Visual), taking abstract sculpture and design courses. During this period, he conducted studies in the history of cartography and exploration and did a series of drawings and paintings in Lisbon and along the Portuguese coast. Olshin completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (I.H.P.S.T.) at the University of Toronto in September 1993. His dissertation involved the history of cartography, examining early maps and sea charts. During these years, he also completed a series of watercolors in Toronto, did design and drafting work for an architecture firm in São Paulo, Brazil, and worked for an architecture atelier in Tokyo, Japan, designing, drafting, building architectural models, and doing restoration work. He also traveled through other parts of Japan during this period and then journeyed to Hong Kong and Tahiti, doing numerous sketches, watercolors, and oil paintings. Other travels have included Singapore, Indonesia, Iceland, Hawai'i, and a return to Brazil, leading to a new series of sketches, drawings, and paintings. Olshin has worked in university fine arts and design departments in Taiwan and the U.S., developing and teaching various courses in drawing, painting, model-making, industrial design, and design history.

More details concerning the artist - 

https://www.inliquid.org/artist/olshin 

https://benjaminbolshin.net/artdesign