TWICE TALENTED
Role Model Scarlett Olson
is making a name for herself
in music and fine arts

Age: 28
Occupation: Artist, singer
Personal: Married since October 2007 to Les Reaves, an Internet marketing executive; the couple shares a Boston terrier and an Abyssinian kitten.
Why she’s a Role Model: Moves smoothly between two artistic careers and two homes in Texas and Colorado; doesn’t limit herself in style or genre.
Goals: Finding permanent representation for her art in Colorado; recording a solo album.
Believes in: ”Living each day to the fullest and without regrets.”
Favorite relaxation strategy: “For pain and stress management, I like acupuncture and hot baths.”
People would be surprised that I …“was a member of Showstoppers (youth musical troupe at the Josephine Theater) in high school, since I was never in school plays. We (Alamo Heights High School) had a great drama department, but they weren’t doing musicals then, and that was what I wanted to do.”
What she’s reading: Memoirs of a Geisha and art history books about the Pre-Raphaelites.

By PAULA ALLEN
Photography JANET ROGERS

The paint is not yet dry on some of Scarlett Olson’s canvases as she finishes up a series bound for a Women’s History Month exhibit at a Denver gallery. Artists in the group show were asked to submit works to fit into several categories: abstract, figurative and historical. Olson has done all three, an exercise in style switching that is second nature to her.

A luminous abstract landscape in blue-green tones makes use of a signature technique — working in oils thinned with water that allows the paint to drip in subtle patterns that soften the lines of the land and water features that blur together in gentle curves.

Are the forms hills? Meadows? Pools? The indistinctness is intentional. People react to her abstract landscapes emotionally, says Olson: “They see in them what they want to see, something the paintings remind them of, a memory of a landscape.”

A figurative portrait symbolizes “what women value,” says Olson, 28, with musical notes standing for beauty, a shell for new life and a space around the central female figure to show that “a woman is a whole person, married or not.”

The historical figure she has chosen to portray is Magda Trocmé, wife of a Protestant minister in a small French town who hid Jewish refugees in the home the couple shared with their seven children. Trocmé and the interior of her home are shown in vibrant color, while the figures of Nazi soldiers outside the door are a ghostly gray.

Olson was adding finishing touches to the paintings while visiting her parents, George and Margo Olson, who still live in the house Scarlett grew up in, which effectively has two addresses — one for mailing and a completely different one on a ceramic plaque near the front door, a memento of a former, well-known owner of the house.

Scarlett, 28, now has two homes of her own, in Austin and in Vail, Colo. Last October, she married Internet marketing executive Les Reaves, whom she met through a mutual friend in Austin. Because the couple’s careers are portable, Olson and Reaves divide their time between two homes, with two studios for her and two offices for her husband. They shuttle back and forth between their homes, following the climate — Austin’s temperate winters followed by spring skiing and cooler summers in Vail — or other events in their lives, such as Olson’s upcoming exhibit.

“We have to have two sets of everything,” she says, smiling, adding that duplicate art supplies are particularly important for Colorado, since some items aren’t available in the resort town, and that stocking up at Whole Foods is a must before each westward move.

Ease with dualism came early to Olson, who is not only a fine artist but a singer. Her interest in art came first, and she started taking private lessons at age 7, following up with classes at the San Antonio Art Institute, then on the grounds of the McNay Museum. At 11, she added singing lessons and soon became a member of Showstoppers, the young people’s musical troupe based at the Josephine Theater. At that time, she says, the drama department at Alamo Heights High School concentrated on nonmusical theater.

“Showstoppers were perfect for people like me who liked singing more than acting,” she says. “It was like the high school in the movie Fame.”

She doesn’t limit herself to a single musical genre either, in practice or performance. Currently working on putting together a band for singing appearances in Colorado, Olson sings “all the music that I like — jazz, salsa, Latin rock and cumbia.”

Growing up in a multicultural family has been a big influence on her visual as well as vocal artistry. After a year at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico, she spent a summer in Mexico City with relatives on her mother’s side and decided to spend a year there, traveling and exploring and taking art classes at the Universidad Iberoamerican.

The following year, she enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Vera Cruz before coming back to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Texas at Austin. “When I came home, my father told me he had set up an interview for me,” she says. “Then I discovered they had a fantastic studio art program.”

Though she has done a little teaching — mostly lessons for friends’ children — “I’ve never wanted to be anything but a fine artist,” says Olson.

After graduation, she stayed in Austin, where she co-owned an artist’s cooperative gallery and showed her work in solo and group exhibitions. Her international experience not only left her fluent in Spanish but has informed her work, some of which shows influences from Mexican folk art, Catholic iconography and the strong, clear colors of her Hispanic heritage.

Shortly before she met her husband, Olson also was influenced by something entirely contemporary — what she calls the “online culture of commercialism.” In a time when people turn to the Internet to fulfill a wide variety of needs, from information to shopping to finding a mate, the artist experimented with typing in the words “love,” “peace,” “hope,” “truth” and “beauty” — search terms that led to her to sites such as eBay, where the abstractions tagged images of angel collectibles, Care Bears and other mass-culture items, which she combined with more traditional images to create small collages, often used in children’s rooms.

In the meantime, Olson has taken up voice lessons again, this time with a coach who teaches the Speech Level Singing technique originated by Seth Riggs, coach to singers such as Kelly Clarkson, Stevie Wonder and other pop superstars. Olson says the method has not only extended her musical range but allowed her to practice longer — three or four hours at a time, instead of her previous two — because it cuts down on vocal fatigue.

In a typical day, Olson and her husband work at home — and no, they don’t get on each other’s nerves. “We love working at home together,” she says.

Olson does her vocal exercises in the morning, jogs or does stretches every day and goes into her studio to paint at lunchtime. While she hopes to start a family, she’s not ready quite yet. “Painting, for me, takes a lot of thinking time,” she says.

She also expects to continue to pursue both artistic careers at a professional level, with an emphasis on her visual art. “I love to sing, but I only think of myself as a professional (singer) because I get paid for gigs,” Olson says. “If I couldn’t sing, I’d be sad, but if I couldn’t paint ... I can’t imagine not painting. I’d feel disconnected from myself.”