Jodi Olcott
Jody Olcott’s art remembers extinct animals and calls attention to the many thousands of species at risk of extinction in the coming decades. She found inspiration for this series while traveling in Russia and seeing Byzantine religious icons. In her works, she preserves aspects of traditional icons—gold halos, painted wooden panels, decorative constructions with opening doors—but turns her attention to her own sacred subject: extinct animals. The animals in Olcott’s form of altarpieces—species of birds, tigers, wolves—are as diverse as the reasons they are extinct, but their message is singular: a call for better stewardship.
Olcott, who holds a Bachelor of Science in Design and Environmental Analysis from Cornell University, works out of her studio in Hopewell, NJ, and her work is in numerous private collections.
