Artwork: “Brewmance” by David Olenick.
David Olenick’s painfully funny and occasionally profane art comes from an unlikely background: the fashion industry. For 15 years, the New York artist worked his way up from graphic designer to art director, completing the trajectory at Macy’s children’s apparel department.
Fashion might seem like a “fun” industry, but as Olenick says, “You’d be surprised how overworked and how stressful they can make something.” Still, he never thought he would do anything but continue to work in that pressure-cooker environment as the underling of someone else—until a lay-off left him with time on his hands and a generous severance package. He decided to take three months off “and do nothing,” he says. He saw gallery shows, patronized museums, went to the movies, and caught up on reading. When the three months were up, he decided to take another three months. “I ended up spending about a year-and-a-half resetting my brain, not having a job but also not doing artwork yet,” he says.
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Then he started creating and reunited with the kind of illustration he gravitated toward in college: simple, poster-like graphics. The work that has emerged in the three years since has become his full-time career—and he owes the success, in part, to his professional past. “The understanding of merchandising and trend and how to communicate clearly and directly to someone’s emotions on a T-shirt—all that, I developed over the years in the fashion industry,” he says.
Artwork: “Missing Person” by David Olenick.
You’ll see this in one of the artist’s recurring themes: eyeballs. On everything. A boomerang, an eraser, a computer screen, a razor. In children’s apparel speak, Olenick is pimping the “awww” factor, an image that grabs the attention of moms and makes them connect in an emotional way to it. This instinct is mammalian in nature; it’s the same urge that makes people stop and coo at babies.
“To appeal to whatever it is in our brains that makes us empathize with things that are ‘cute’ is really important,” he says. “I got really proficient at focusing on that and setting off that trigger. Even though my work is not exactly about being ‘cute’ now, it’s a really good counterpoint when the message is negative.”
There’s another recurring theme in Olenick’s work—food. Hot dogs, cheese, doughnuts, pizza; these are just some of the craveable eats he captures on solid color backgrounds and pairs with clever puns.
“I have what I think of as a low-grade eating disorder,” he says, “but it’s the kind of thing that everybody has, where food is something we’re addicted to. We live in a relatively wealthy society and there’s abundance for a lot of people. We eat for pleasure, but we also eat for comfort and to be happy.”
In Olenick’s world, food and beverages talk to the viewer; they taunt, they tempt, they tease. A glass of wine drunkenly advises “You should text him.” A cup of tea demands “Calm the hell down.” A seductively lounging chocolate bar begs “Take me now.” A self-scooping pint of ice cream promises “No one has to know.” A burger brazenly dares “Fuck your diet.” Whether you call it a struggle, an obsession, a fetish, or a fear of losing control of what you consume, Olenick probably has an image that you can relate to.
Artwork: “Taco Eclipse of the Heart” by David Olenick.
These food and beverage characters are hilarious, yes, but they’re also tender in their truth. Who hasn’t felt like coffee’s bitch? Or had a hot and heavy affair with peanut butter? We are all slaves to our impulses at some point; Olenick’s masters just happens to be the things he eats and drinks. “Every day, I spend the time between the meals fantasizing about the next one and the next one,” he says. He believes the ability to observe his quirks, laugh at what occupies his mind, and integrate it in a genuine way into his work is a function of age. As a younger artist, he wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the humor in his fixations and anxieties.
Olenick is unlike other artists in that he doesn’t do commissions; he draws whatever he wants, posts it on the internet, and people find him after the fact to license his work. His designs have graced T-shirts, clocks, coffee mugs, coasters, and greeting cards on sites like Threadless, Society6, and Ohh Deer.
The initial idea is the easy part for Olenick. Going out for drinks or walking around New York City tends to induce spontaneous creativity. The agony is in the fine-tuning, picking the best word, perfecting the tone, or nailing the details of the faces.“None of it feels like work,” he says of his growing business. “Even to the point of social media, which should be an absolute nightmare to me, because I’m not a social person. I have a lot of fun with it.”
Artwork: “Heated Rhetoric” by David Olenick.
Olenick doesn’t have plans to break away from his current style or explore drastically new territory for now. “This is a very if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it situation for me,” he says. As long as the orders keep coming in, and his designs continue to feel authentic, he’ll stick with what sells. That said, he’s not opposed to evolving. “It still feels like it’s natural and flexible and developing and changing in its own small ways as I go. What’s fun and exciting for me is thinking of the funny ideas and communicating them.”
