The road to Julie Olson’s house seemed endless in its twists and switchbacks and curves, all downhill along a steep forested slope overlooking Dabob Bay as I had never seen it. Houses were dropped here and there to my right, midway down a slope that lead, eventually, to a beach. Across the bay were steep cliffs; the clay a pale tan.

It seemed a place where one would like to linger.

As I drove into Olson’s yard, several men were sawing lumber at a small mill.  Olson had told me her husband Rick would plan to be outside when I came; whether to avoid me, or to give his wife her own time I wasn’t sure.

I parked behind a white Ford pickup and made my way to the house. Several cat food bowls were on the porch, which overlooked the mile of beach where Olson and her husband harvest oysters.

In the day, she told me once I was seated at the kitchen table, she and Rick once shucked and shelled 40 gallons of oysters a week.

“We stopped doing oysters, the shucking part, 15, 20 years ago,” she said, standing in the doorway to her living room. When carpal tunnel affected her so badly that she  could hardly make a fist, she underwent cold laser therapy: That worked wonders.

I became fascinated with her hands from that moment.

EYE OF THE  BEHOLDER

Olson has been painting for 50 years.

In those hands, the oysters that are the Olsons’ livelihood can be recycled into yet another product after she paints intricate designs on their smooth interiors.

She brought some small oyster shells to the table, spreading them out.

“I see these ones as pansies,” she said, comparing the bare shells with two vibrantly painted ones that looked very much like the real thing, down to the sizing.

“The pansy ones, the chicken ones, they got to have the pointy heads, and the snowman ones,” she said, explaining how she can visualize what each shell will become before she’s even picked up a paintbrush.

And paintbrush here, seems a generous term. Some of the brushes she showed me made me wonder if there were mere hairs bound under the ferrule.

One brush had “18/0” printed on the handle. The smallest paintbrushes I’d heard of were 30/0 and 20/0, and this was a close cousin.

I looked around her work space for a loupe, or some kind of optical magnifying lens clipped to her work light.

But Olson told me she takes off her glasses to paint, because she is nearsighted.

To prepare for our interview, Olson had spent at least an hour setting up display boxes of her work. She told me that someone else was coming out to look at some items, anyway, but it looked like a bit of work, and everything was arranged carefully around the living room.

A tabby cat curled in a rocking chair across from a wood stove, and Olson confirmed that the smell coming from the kitchen was navy bean soup, a scent that instantly sent me back to childhood.

NATURE’S CANVAS

Scanning her collection, Olson’s familiarity with nature and seascapes was unmistakable. She’s all but brined in sea water, growing up in Garibaldi, Oregon. She met Rick at a shrimp processing plant and they were married two days before she turned 18.

After studying oil painting in high school, she ended up taking tole painting classes in with Gayle Orem.

“I always liked to draw,” Olson said.
“I think I learned quite a bit from her.”

(Later, she told me, “If you can’t draw it right, you can’t paint it right.”)

Examples of her tole painting were found in her kitchen on a paper-towel holder, and a lacquered tray.

But Olson’s love of nature and treasure hunting found objects compelled her to combine them to create works of art.

Boxes of painted sand-dollars were spread out on the end of a glass-topped coffee table full of such treasures. An agate watch fob found in a creek, sea glass in every color from Alaska, ancient stone artifacts, a hefty antique padlock.

In contrast, the sand dollars were chock-full of detail, each lighthouse or creature painstakingly created with those same minuscule brushes I’d seen earlier.

When I asked how she managed to paint such delicate lines on such a rough surface, she let me in on her method.

“I mix oil paint, and linseed oil,” she said. “The sand dollars absorb the paint.”

It took a few tries to get the ratio right, and there’s very little margin for error. But now she paints her designs from photographs, and has been asked to do many customs. One of a motorcycle took her 10 to 12 hours. People don’t bat an eye at spending $250 or $300 for those, although many of her sand dollars are under $50.

“I don’t do it to make money,” she said, while admitting she has to sell them in order to support her painting habit.

THE DEEP END

The sand dollars are her signature items, and she has been selling them in a store in Rockaway Beach, Oregon, for 20 years.

Recently, Olson has added another dimension, literally, to her paintings: resin.

With the pandemic shutting everything down, Olson started experimenting with resin, a two-part epoxy that once mixed in equal parts, is poured and hardened within 12 hours, curing fully after 30 days.

A flat basin filled with sand held “tide pool” oysters, with tiny starfish (many collected by Olson on their beach), shells, stones, and dried plants “floating” in miniature oceans. She said her husband even made a few of the tide pools himself; he said hers were “too busy.” At this, she laughed.

A display stand of clear resin initial keychains filled with hand-picked and dried flowers and tiny insects stood across from the kitchen table.

Olson hovered near me, looking at the latest batch of resin pours sitting in rows on the table. She popped a camper trailer from a silicon mold and inspected it.

“This is my favorite tool,” she said of a pocket knife she drew from the table. She uses it to pare off the sharp edges of resin from an object after it’s finished.

It seemed almost meditative to her.

“When I do the resin, I feel that is my painting, too,” she added.

“Right now is our slow season, because winter is night tides,” she explained. “I’ve just been painting and stockpiling” she added.

Oyster season kicks up in March, and then it will be much harder to find time to paint.

Typically, Olson is awake by 6 a.m. She might paint for a bit at her paint station in front of the kitchen window, where she can look outside, or mix and pour resin for three or four hours. Most of the pieces she does involve multiple layers of resin. She’ll seal in a layer of sand and shells, then uses white oil paints to draw trails of seafoam through cerulean water on the next layer, and so on until the resin has filled the oyster shell. She’s even been painting fish on the surface, remarkably life-like, although she is not content with them yet.

Olson relies on local craft fairs to sell her goods, which she markets under the name, “Nature’s Canvas.” Last year, she did all three events hosted by the Quilcene Craft Fair held at the Masonic Lodge in Quilcene, and she’s gearing up for the upcoming April gathering. She plans on being at the Holiday Gift and Food Fair in Bremerton this November, too.

In the meantime, Olson posts her work on the “I’ve heard of Quilcene” community Facebook page.

Reflecting on her seeing her own work on display, Olson was modest, but honest. “Wow, they do look nice,” she tells herself.

“I love making beautiful things,” she said.