Audio tour Olive Fell: A Wyoming Multimedia Artist

Olive Fell was born in Big Timber, Montana in 1902. She moved to Cody soon after, graduating from Cody High School. She attended the University of Wyoming, paying for her education by running a little tea shop. Upon graduation from the University, she took classes at the New York City Art League and the Chicago Art Institute. She graduated form the Chicago school and returned to Cody.

After a short-lived marriage in the 1920’s to S. S. Kensel, Olive, who had never stopped using her maiden name, devoted the rest of her life to art. She was inspired by the beautiful scenery and wild animals that surrounded her at her ranch on the north fork of the Shoshone River. She had hopes of becoming a nationally recognized fine artist, however, she was never able to financially support herself through her art. In finding ways to earn money, she became increasingly interested in printmaking. Olive perfected a new and original process of clay-coated, hand-made paper prints. She created these printmaking plates utilizing hand made tools which she put together from mowing machine bolts, bits of knife blades, and a used hand drill run by a foot treadle she found in an alley dump. After laboriously picking and digging the clay coating off the paper, she reworked and finished them by hand using etching tools. She created over 13,000 prints in this ingenious manner.

Olive is well known for her prints of bears, which were reproduced and sold in the Hamilton stores of Yellowstone National Park. This provided a steady stream of income for her, allowing Olive to continue painting fine art and produce etchings and silkscreens. In addition to the prints, she also painted men’s ties to sell, further supporting her art. She experimented further with fabrics in her work, producing images through a color glow process. Olive’s artworks, from the prints to her fine paintings, demonstrate originality both in subject matter and technique.

In her later years, she sold her Four-Bear Ranch and bought a motor home to travel around the American Southwest, including Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Inspired by her travels, she began to paint Southwest scenes, including many studies of Native Americans from the region. In 1980 Olive Fell passed away at the age of 77. Join us in exploring Olive’s artwork in this virtual exhibit, from Yellowstone bear prints made through her unique printmaking process to nature scenes in stunning oil paint to delicate etchings to striking color glow studies.