From Repulsion to Care

Leanne Olson is an artist, educator and writer. She has maintained a near two decade self-taught and community engaged art practice since completing a BA in Film Studies in 2003 at the University of Alberta. In 2019, she returned to campus and is an MFA candidate at the University of Victoria. Olson's work focuses on land and water bodies that are tasked with jobs, such as landfills, sulphurous springs, and recreational lakes. Her practice includes repeat visitation and empathic documentation of these sites as they are entangled in massive change. The subjects in her images are often micro captures of ecosystems adapting to human odds and responding to the effects of time. Olson received international media coverage for her recent exhibition at the Mitchell Art Gallery at MacEwan University and for her 2018 residency with the Edmonton Waste Management Centre.