the
Blot
Story

Olivia used to work as an esthetician, specializing in eyelash extensions. A unique vision came to Olivia: an untapped artistic potential exists in the remains of eyelash glue leftover from each session. She found that on what she had initially regarded as “trash” displayed subtle and intricate beauty in the form of not only the drops and lines of charcoal-black glue but also in the wear and tear from fingerprints, dust and chemical reactions of the glue and plastic. Each plastic strip contained an entire cosmos in miniature, and the notion of turning these scraps into art lit a fire in Olivia that is still burning bright. 

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Olivia accumulated the leftovers after each appointment and after building a sufficient collection she sought out a local printer who used a drum scanner to produce high resolution images. With these magnified greyscale images, Olivia used digital creative tools to alter the worlds of black and white abstraction into colorful universes of varying form and structure. Each product of this process has an individual spirit and psychology and no two blots are the same.

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Olivia’s artwork is an embodiment of one of the most beautiful aspects of the creative spirit: the transformation of otherwise dormant, and in this case commonly discarded, materials into valuable and joyful expression. She has turned her means of day to day living into a source of unexpected artistic fuel, which means one can not exist without the other, and makes both equally important.