Art Portfolio

Olivia Goers (she/her) is a Minneapolis-based artist currently studying for her Art BA at the University of Minnesota and expects to graduate in the Spring of 2022. Goers’ art practice began with drawing, painting, paper cut, and collage as a way to explore and understand the world around her, and has since expanded to include printmaking and book arts. Her work has evolved thematically to explore identity, environment, mortality, and sexualization. She has shown artwork in various shows and exhibitions including the 2018 Viva City exhibition with “Dependency”, LOOK/SEE Student Exhibition in 2018 at High Point Center for Printmaking, and the 2018 BioArt Exhibition at the University of Minnesota with a piece called “Untitled, Fairy Rings”. In 2017 and 2018, Goers worked as part of an art and writing collective called Revolution 180 to collaborate on the “Revolution Shanty” for the Art Shanty Project. In the future, Goers hopes to continue to expand on her artistic skills as well as continue to explore the themes in her artwork.

I am an artist whose works span multiple mediums. I began my art practice with a focus on drawing, painting, paper cutting, and collage as a way to understand the world and myself, but I have since expanded and evolved my art practice to focus primarily on printmaking, drawing, and book arts. As I have developed as an artist, it has become very apparent to me that the physical act of creating my work is very important to me; I need to be able to touch and feel the materials that I am working with because it provides me control over my work, the ability to connect with what I am making, and it helps me better understand my concepts and themes. I care about creating aesthetically pleasing work, therefore the medium, color, and concept are all big considerations as I develop ideas and sketches, and sometimes this takes more time than making the actual artwork.

As my artistic mediums and practices have evolved, my artwork has also evolved thematically. In my practice, I tend to explore identity, environment, mortality/cycles of life, and sexualization. My artwork is a self-indulgent practice. It's a form of escapism that allows me to express myself and process my life. Therefore, my work is based on things that I find profoundly interesting and/or beautiful that I want to explore, better understand, and/or appreciate. I am interested in the ephemeral and capturing insignificant moments or things. The themes that I typically work with allow me to be introspective while also being relatable or broad enough that viewers of my art can draw their own conclusion and form their own opinions and perspectives about it. My work is about creating an image of the world as I perceive it. I do not seek to invent an imagined world or reality but to expand upon it instead. Most recently, I created a piece entitled “The Mythical and Mystical”, an intaglio print depicting a personal sanctuary. I find comfort in the outdoors, the natural world, and the idea that life isn’t eternal, so I created an image that discusses the beauty of the cycle of life and death through the imagery of a deer skull surrounded by mushrooms, lichen, ferns, clovers, insects, and flowers.

I draw inspiration from artists like Swoon, Ana Mendieta, Kiki Smith, Kelly Belter, Ren Hang, Junji Ito, and Takato Yamamoto because I love how they represent and explore the world, its environments, and its inhabitants. Although each of these artists creates very different work, I love how each offers a unique perspective on the world and I hope to emulate that in my own work. Currently, I aim to continue to develop my skills as a printmaker and bookmaker to the point where I feel comfortable calling myself by those titles in my practice.