Piper Olivas’ BFA thesis exhibition was originally scheduled from April 20–24 in the Oliver Art Center on CCA’s Oakland campus. Due to the Bay Area’s COVID-19 shelter-in-place order, we are sharing work by Piper and other graduating students on CCA’s website and social media channels.

Artwork by Piper Olivas will be featured on CCA's official social media channels, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, starting April 20 at 5pm PDT. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

Piper Olivas' thesis, The Body is the Heaviest Burden, explores themes of aging and growth through semiabstract works with an emphasis on the female form. The dichotomy between life and death, and the looming anxiety surrounding the progression of time and loss of youth, are investigated in relation to Western culture. How does the body exist as it ages, and how do we come to terms with the inevitable process of getting old? Textural mixed media works utilizing elements of photography, painting, ceramic and found objects traverse these ideas and are an ode to metamorphosis and the capacity of the human body. 

BIO

Piper Huntington Olivas is an American artist focusing on identity and form. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, she currently works and lives in Oakland, California. Her work explores the delicate and often unpredictable relationship between the environment and the self. Her large scale photographic installations, featuring nature and mixed-media forms, seek to disrupt one’s perception of conventional symbols. Pulling from a variety of classical poetry and text as inspiration, Olivas also explores her own identity within these mixed media pieces. She currently studies full time at California College of the Arts where she is earning her BFA in photography. 

Right: Piper Huntington Olivas, Metamorphosis, 2019. Canvas print, 44 x 56 inches.

To view more work by Piper Olivas, visit piperolivas.com or follow @deturpate on Instagram.