Q&A with Patricia Olynyk

What is your favorite tool, material, and/or process?
The studio is my favorite tool

What is the best advice you’ve ever received about your work?
Repetition is a form of change

What is the best advice you’ve ever given to someone about their work?
In simple terms, describe the key question or issue that drives your work.

Where do you make work?
St. Augustine’s compound, a former church I bought a few years ago

What do you listen to/watch while you work?
Usually podcasts or Brian Eno

What’s your top studio jam?
Another Green World

Best studio hack OR the skill you’d be most lost without?
There isn’t one; each project requires a shift in tools and processes

What food can be used to bribe you?
chocolate

Do you have a studio uniform? Please describe.
no

It’s the 11th hour before your opening. What are you doing?
Tying up loose ends

Who or what has had the biggest influence on your work?
The history of science and visual phenomena, cybernetics, Jakob von Uexküll and his concepts involving “umwelt”

A book you’ve read more than twice is..
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

How do you stay motivated?
Travel and collaboration

How do you procrastinate?
Eating chocolate

Early Bird or Night Owl?
Night owl

Do you have pets? If so, what are their species and names?
Last pet passed: chinchilla named Mephisto

Biggest pet peeve?
Pointless busy work

What is your favorite thing about St. Louis?
Easy access to the airport

Epoxy, mineral spirits, or Command-Z?
Return

Tell us something we forgot to ask:
Seek to live in “A big here and a long now”