Olan Quattro: "Strange Ancestors" collection

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Strange Ancestors is a series of works that explore how memory can be healed and redefined. Olan Quattro is interested in family myths and distortions.

The work is layered with old family letters, photographs, and pages from books. These are the artifacts of her history. These collages are silent images extracted and manipulated from a romanticized past.

"I come from a family of artists and writers."

Olan Quattro is a third-generation visual artist. Her legacy consists of papers, drawings, letters, diaries, ticket stubs, and photographs of her relatives dating back several generations. These forgotten papers are her palette.

She has traveled and moved with boxes and suitcases full of the debris of their forgotten lives. The family stories she grew up hearing were bigger than life itself. According to those stories, her family tree includes magical creatures, witches, and mysterious strangers. These figures inhabit my family history.

These collages are his way of telling these stories, writing these poems, and painting these images.