Maggie Quinn Art – Spring Garden of Artists on Chaleur Bay

by Margaret Sharon Olscamp Dunlop NB Canada 4:06 Thursday June 6 2024

For once I actually have a piece with a date attached. I wrote the following blog on my Facebook site in 2014, ten years ago. No I never received a response. Time went on and eventually the email address was retired. It’s enough to make an artist wonder if she maybe died a while back and still hasn’t discovered that she’s simply a figment of her own creative mind. Anyway, the blurb went like this:

“Margaret Sharon Olscamp
November 13, 2014 ·
Granny just knows… All those years of watching and waiting … And trying and starting and pausing
A name is what everybody wants these days. We live in the Rumplestiskin Age,
which directly follows the no-name brand age which followed the distressed brand age which followed the regular brand age … I’m not really sure what we called that age before the brand age.
And the next age? In old age an artist looks back. Will she turn to salt?
Artist is looking for photos of old artwork.
Local Bathurst NB artist, Sharon Olscamp, is asking for help locating pieces of artwork. Work done during or before the mid 1970s include artworks that were part of a group exhibit Olscamp organized at Bathurst Community College (now CCNB) before it underwent major renovations during the late seventies. This group show included works by Jane Guerts, Ivan Nowlan and Jean-Guy La Plante.
A group of 12 of Olscamp’s paintings/drawings eventually came to hang in the Bathurst City Club in the early eighties. If you have or know anyone who has one of these artworks, please contact the artist. She would like to have copies of photos taken of the works and display these photos as part of an Art Festival to take place in May, 2015.
Olscamp’s art was also part of a three woman art show at the Restigouche Gallery in Campbellton NB around that time. Olscamp’s work was also displayed at various local festival exhibits on the Acadian Peninsula (as it is sometimes called). About that same time Olscamp’s work was also included in an Acadian Art travelling show curated by the late Hilda-Lavoie Frachon.
Other pieces of Art (painted during the mid to late seventies) may have been sold out of the Fine Grub Gallery in Nigadoo, NB during or after that time. At least one ink and watercolour piece is piece is known to have been purchased by a collector and taken to British Columbia.
Several earlier artworks were gifted to friends in Spain and a few other pieces done in Toronto about 1966 are oil paintings which are believed to have found their way to the United States.
Various other charcoal and pastel drawings, local scenery and portraits were done and sold in the early seventies when the artist worked one summer with a group of artists from Montreal (one of these was an artist who worked at Expo ’67)
Photos of any of Olscamp’s work from this period, should any still exist, would also be greatly appreciated.
It would also be nice to have pictures of a pair of copper-enamel plates taken from a downstairs apartment in West Bathurst around 1982. These enamel works would have been part of the Bi-enniel Enamel art show in Montreal had they not been lost beforehand.
A number of other small works by Olscamp are the hand-bound leather books, boxes and small cases crafted during the late eighties as well as instrument straps and harmonica cases sold out of Music City instrument store for many years and as recently as last year. Leather purses and bags were also made and sold out of a back workshop for a time. Another group of hand-mades were aprons sold from the Bathurst Farmers Market as well as the Snow-White Arts and Crafts Festival held one year at the Casey Irving Centre in Bathurst. Any photos of these would also be appreciated.
Over the years Olscamp made evening dresses, graduation gowns, wedding dresses and brides-maid dresses, most of which were done without compensation. Pictures of these would be greatly appreciated.
Over the years Olscamp’s art-work included many drawings and paintings and for much of this work she was never paid. There were several wall murals, one covering the bottom outside wall at the Bathurst Village Club. Olscamp would like to have a copies of any photos taken that might have that mural in the back- ground.
There were signs and posters for fund-raisers held by local organizations, signs and posters and photographs for bands. There were paintings and drawings Olscamp finally gave away because no one wanted to purchase them.
There were bibles and books Olscamp restored, a job not greatly appreciated for the labour-intensity and skill involved. In most cases there was not adequate compensation and at least in one case a bill for a bible repair was never paid.
If anyone has photos of any of this work done by Olscamp, she would greatly appreciate hearing from you. Please contact Olscamp at maggiequinn@rogers.com
Your kind help is greatly appreciated.
Margaret Sharon Olscamp
Dunlop New Brunswick Canada”

That was what I wrote, exactly that, word for word ten years ago, and yes the email was good for several years. And why did I want copies or photos? I thought of having a retrospective. I was over 65. That was the age at which people retire and friends and workers throw them a retirement party. Since I’d never had a “real job”, as in one that brings in a living wage, I had no hopes of a retirement party. A retrospective exhibit of my past work seemed like a reasonable facsimile. Since I never received a response I had nothing to show

I’m still hoping, however. I always tell myself “Self, if all you’ve got is hope … you gotta have hope”. Hmmm now maybe I could work that into a song. In any case, I’ve had the same telephone number for over 40 years and it’s still good … well, as far as I know it’s still good even if the only people who call are my kids.