Olga Volchkova

Who is Olga Volchkova?

Olga Volchkova is a Russian-born artist currently resident in Eugene, Oregon.

Volchkova was born in Tver, Russia, in 1970. There she took degrees in chemistry, music, art, art restoration, and icon painting. She worked as a restorer and curator in the Tver Oblast Art Gallery, and as part of a licensed journeyman iconostasis team.

In 1998, she moved to the United States, where she worked as a restorer in Manhattan. That same year, she moved to downtown Palo Alto, California, where she found herself in the heart of the first Dotcom boom. She became artistic director for Workspot, a now defunct start-up and contracting house near University Avenue in Palo Alto. There she pioneered the commercial use of scanned watercolors in webpage design, a laborious approach that won her no imitators, but many admirers—Workspot took the 2000 Linux Journal award for best Internet product.

In 2000 she moved to Eugene, Oregon. She studied ceramics and figure sculpture at the University of Oregon, and her work became a small sensation in Eugene's wood-fired ceramics movement. In 2002 she began to study at the world-renowned Pilchuck Glass School, where she discovered cast glass. One of her first pieces was selected as the only cast glass work for Pilchuck's live auction, Passion Afire, of emerging glass artists, held at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Within a year, Pilchuck also selected her work for their annual live auction, in the company of some of the world's most famous glass artists.