I had the honor to interview Susan Olmetti, a brilliant and successful artist who wholly embraces her dis-ease and thrives.  Here is the transcript of our conversation. 

Interview With Susan Olmetti

An Artist Creates “In the Zone” of her Bipolar Gift

Susan Olmetti (SO), Abstract Artist

Valery Satterwhite (VS), Author, Inner Wealth Expert, Coach, Speaker

VS: Hello, I’m Valery Satterwhite, the founder of MoxieTherapy.com. I help  unfulfilled people rediscover their voice, learn how to boldly and positively express it so they can satisfy what's "missing" in their personal or professional life. to find out more go to htttp://www.MoxieTherapy.com

Our topic today is “How Art is Used to Overcome Personal and Mental Challenges”. And my guest is Susan Olmetti, she’s an amazing artist who creates in multiple mediums including photography, painting, poetry, wearable art, hair-design and wardrobe and 3-dimentional art. And as a recognized artist her work is seen in a number of galleries in New York and in Chicago. As a person who has overcome a bipolar disability, she’s been invited to speak in front of a number of organizations that support children and adults who struggle with bipolar disorders. Some of her work can be seen at her website susanolmetti.com, that’s Susan O-L-M-E-T-T-I.com.

Susan, hello and welcome to the Call.

SO: Hello, Valery.

VS: It’s so nice to have you here.

SO: Thank you.

VS: Share with us a little bit about your story and tell us what compelled you or inspired you to do what you’re doing today.

SO: Ahm… I would have to say my father. I think the sudden death of my father and I think he inspired me. My father lived some 69 years old, only a year short of his 70^th birthday; my father was bipolar as well. He was a genius in himself; he knew how to fix everything and do everything. I don’t think there was anything that he couldn’t do; I think he lived a very sad life because of his bipolar disorder. I think that he was judged, and there were a lot of challenges that were presented to him that he just couldn’t overcome because he wanted to be there for his children. And he was kindda limited on what he could do because he suffers so much from his illness and I spent a lot of my childhood years having experiences with his bipolar disorder that I wasn’t able to spend as much time with him as I would have liked to. So, when he died I… he had such a cute little face; it runs in my family where we have round faces.

VS: I saw your photo yesterday, it just … quite rounded and rosy.

SO: Yeah, and my father had such a rounded, rosy face even when he was...you know… he was 90 lbs. and he was just such a trooper. And I always said, “Dad, I promise you I’m gonna do something with my life”. What? I don’t know but I wanted to make sure that he was also recognized for the great person that he was, that people really never knew how talented and how beautiful and how kind my father really was. I feel like he was disregarded in a lot of ways, the same way I was disregarded as a child. So my main inspiration was the death of my father.

VS: So people are not their affliction; they are who they are outside of the affliction.

SO: Right.

VS: Sounds like, you know, you father had suffered from bipolar disability as do you. Can you tell us what exactly a bipolar disorder is? And how does it affect people?

SO: Okay let me…I have everything written for you.

VS: (Laughter) You’re prepared. Wonderful.

SO: My primary weakness is my bipolar disorder; this is an emotional disorder in which insight and judgment are affected during mood swings. When one is on an upswing everything is great; the world is bright and beautiful, nothing bad can happen. When one is down is just the opposite, a dark somber mood overlay everything around you and nothing good can happen; the future is bleak.

VS: And how has this affected you?

SO: Through my art.

VS: Through your art. Well, speaking of your art, in our earlier conversations you once told me that you paint the way you see your imagery.

SO: Right.

VS: And with this bipolar disorder, what does that mean for you?

SO: Ahmm…I think a lot of it was the bipolar disorder have to do with…how would I say it…because people would say I am somewhat unusual or different or eccentric, I think part of that ties in with the way I see the world; the way that I dream when I, you know, set out to create a piece I’m dreaming but I’m not dreaming while I’m asleep I’m dreaming while I’m alive and painting and I’m going to different scenarios in my head and different life experiences and I’m projecting that on to my canvass or my drawings. It’s an output of freedom, I think that whenever that you are labeled with any type of stigma or anything that’s just different, I would say you sometimes can, maybe, introvert yourself or sometimes I would, you know, maybe be ashamed or what not on the way people see or look at me or find that I’m odd or the way that I think out of the box is not really normal, to a mundane world. So I create fantasies.

VS: It’s sort of through your lucid dreaming that you splash on canvass or any other medium.

SO: Right. I have displayed a body work in a medium of painting that has given a strong emphasis to technique and personal aesthetic. My approach to abstract painting is how to form the merge to figment and transparency. So, when I set to put the color on the canvass they’re the color that I think go into certain areas of what I see then I start to draw in my character. 

VS: And the colors that you use are so vibrant, they just jump out of the canvass.

SO: Yeah, my paintings are, you know, engages in if you will, with the images that expresses the color schemes that are based on the animation and vibrancy.

VS: Well, they are amazing and each time I look at them on your website I see something different but for a moment I wanna get back to some of the point you have just made about how people looked at you differently; you knew you were different and sometimes people labeled that and many people suffer with any kind of a disability, and especially I would imagine a bipolar disability, they have a lot of difficulty in school. What were some of your challenges as a student and how did your art help you over come them?

SO: Well, I didn’t start to paint until about 11 years ago.

VS: Hmmm..so you were an adult.

SO: Yeah. I did a lot of fashion though, I was always into fashion and clothing and designing; creating in my own mind a vision that I thought were unusual, or I thought had an appeal to someone’s eye or that has  some beauty, I really wasn’t doing it for anybody I was just doing it for myself. It was an outlet for me. My accurate level of education is 8^th grade; I don’t really believe I have credit than in High school. I did once try to go back to figure out if I did out of curiosity and I don’t have any credit.

VS: And all of that is irrelevant to the artist that you are.

SO: Well, it still weighs on my mind every now and then. You know, you always dream of going to a prom or being part of a group in a school or having friends that do school activities or going to…

VS: The social things; it sounds like you kind of miss not having had the social experiences that others have had.

SO: Yeah, things of that nature.

VS: And yet you’ve had other experiences that many of those people who did go to proms never had - your talent for example. Now, you may not have had a formal education but you yourself are a teacher, for example you taught yourself how to paint when you were at the Chelsea Hotel. Tell us a little bit more about that.

SO: I think that the Chelsea Hotel is a very unusual place. It’s a way of life for certain people, for myself, either you go there to visit or you wanna live there. There’s a lot of freedom there, artistically there’s really never been any rules and regulations for creating and when I was there I checked in as a student of FIT.

VS:  In New York.

SO: In New York, and I spent one year in the dorm and then I needed residency somewhere else because you’re only allowed one year in the dorm and I wanted to live there. I wasn’t a painter but I certainly was an artist in my own right, where I styled a lot of work, you know, it’s just things of that nature and I was styling and doing hair. And I like being there but I always said “God I wish I could be a painter” and I have to say that Mr. Stanley Bard, he’s a long time manager of the hotel also a major share holder of the building; he treated me very kindly. My father had just died and I spent one year at the fashion school and the next year at the hotel; I really don’t need that much. I was just admiring and hanging out and seeing what everybody else was doing and I just became very amazed at the creative level and how nice the artists were. How I didn’t feel any different; how I actually felt like I fit in and I actually fit in somewhere. I’ve never fit in anywhere.

VS: You found a home for yourself.

SO: Yeah, and I remember I was invited out my some girls they’re from the upper east side; they invited up for lunch and they wanna come and see my studio and at lunch they remarked that I lived in a dump because my studio – I had just moved in; it was just a raw room, didn’t really have much and I walked them to the lobby and when I came back from the lunch I was crying. And I see Mr. Stanley Bard in the lobby and he said “What’s wrong?” I said I went out to lunch and took them up to my room and the girls thought I lived in a dump. Then he said, “What could I do to help you?” And when I was in his office I was looking at all his paintings and I said, “Can I have that painting behind your front desk?” He looked at me and said, “But Susan that’s been there for 20 years.” And I said, “Oh please.” And he said, “Oh, oh, okay, take it.” Then I said, “I know there’s painting in the basement and there’s furniture not being used.” He said, “Oh, oh okay take it.” So, I returned all of it, but by the end of I’d say four weeks I had an amazing studio filled with all these beautiful things.

VS:  A New York apartment to die for.  

SO: Yeah.

VS: Having lived in New York I know that, you know, the places are usually typical apartments or tiny spaces.

SO: Yeah, I had all of Stanley Barb’s furniture and personal painting in my office. And I needed styling racks put up and he put them up for me, he’s seeing that I had some emotional problems that was right after my father’s death; I really didn’t do out that much. I was always downstairs on his desk and he gave me inspiration to paint because I would go downstairs and show him all my work and ‘look at this’ I’d say. I can’t get a job I said, “There’s something wrong, something wrong”. He said. “Look at your work, look at your work”. And he said, “Why don’t you start to paint?”           

VS: Wow. He was somebody who gave you perhaps a lot of the positive feedback that you didn’t get from, say teachers and things of that nature because you hadn’t been at school and that was encouraging and that helped feed your soul in a way and inspired you to continue to paint. And obviously, you became a wonderful, amazing, amazing painter. There are so many pieces that are shown just on your website that reached out to me. And what I’d like to do is talk about a couple of them, for example your piece called “When Passion Becomes Peace”. What was the inspiration behind that painting?

SO: You know, when someone sits in the studio, alone or with movies or when I paint sometimes you get a little antsy and you need to move around like sometimes I’ll start a painting then I’ll take a ride or go to the bank or go to a store and I’ll come back, you know, I get things out of my head and with “When Passion Becomes Peace” I didn’t move.

VS: Ah, you were totally in that zone.

SO: Yeah, and it helped me understand that do really love what I do. Just…I guess so…

VS: (Laughter) So when you’re totally enrapt in what you’re passionate about you find peace.

SO: Yeah.

VS: Wow.

SO: It is very difficult because you have to multi-task.

VS: In what way?

SO: Well, I have my own website, I have these production people that I work with; you have the editors and I’m in the middle of producing a show in New York City.   

VS: So you have to kinda quiet all that done, so you can get to that creative, intuitive part of you.

SO: Yeah, I’m working on holding the show, boxing up installation pieces, trying to fund it so I say that right now I haven’t been as prolific at painting in a way that I want to, as much. Like I sat down the other day and I did one which was good but sometimes you have to multi-task if you don’t have somebody out there pushing your name. And I haven’t wanted that yet because I haven’t felt that…well, I shouldn’t say that because I do feel that I’m ready.

VS: You’re like many, many people are really small business owners and small business owners often wear many hats; they juggle a lot of things. But when you want to create your unique product, your service that you provide, you have to sort of set all of that down instead of doing, doing, doing; you just have to find that moment where you can just be and get to that stillness where it just flows through you.

SO: Right.

VS: That’s beautiful. There’s another piece that really, I mean they all do but I want to talk about a couple of them, one I particularly love is called “Let Me Keep One Sacred Thought” it sort of look like a mosaic. What was the sacred thought that you kept that you created this piece?

SO: Well, when I created the piece I was in New York last year working on my show and I was outside painting and I had so many people around me; and like so many people asking me what I’m doing, what’s going on. And usually I’m like chatty-Kathy I, you know, I’ll tell you…and I wanted to finish the piece and I needed to keep one sacred thought. I couldn’t give all my energy, like I could to everybody, because I wanted to keep the inspiration within my own universe for that moment. Usually, I’m sharing all the time but I wanted to finish the piece so I needed to keep one sacred thought. So, I was asking everyone “Please could you come back in a little while?”

VS: You took care of what you needed for yourself as well which, you know, all the time people forget, we do want to help others and share with others but sometimes we forget to put ourselves in the mix of people that we help out.   

SO: Well, I just said “When I’m done, when the piece is done come back at the end of the day and I’ll tell you all about it.” But I needed to stay in my zone because it’s hot outside, the streets are dirty, it’s hard to keep your instruments clean and I needed to paint outside because my studio was kindda small and it didn’t have much ventilation.

VS: Your sacred thought was about keeping your flow going?

SO: Yeah.

VS: Connecting with that part of you that creates. Well, I personally have a huge passion for wearable art; I think my favorite designer who came from the 1960s is Puce and I love every piece in your collection that I’ve seen in your website. And of course as an inner wizard I love that Mattlasse and I probably pronounced that wrong but …it that correct? Mattlasse?

SO: Matt-las-se

VS: And black velvet cloak. It is just stunning. What moved you from creating on canvass to creating beautiful clothing and textile? Or did the clothing and textiles come before the canvass work? Sounds like it did.

SO: Well, the textiles were always there, I make symmetry and I like to work in different areas; in clothes, the things that I select on my website or clothes in my design pretty much have some colors to them or some swing and so sometimes it moves me just as much. I mean, I guess you would say that I spend a lot of time alone with my artwork and sometimes I feel like I never get to get dressed up and go out so I create all my little outfit, and that they’re here in my room.

VS: They are just gorgeous; I mean each one is a piece of art.

SO: Thank you.

VS: They’re gorgeous. They’re absolutely gorgeous. So now that you’re an established artist, how has your art help you cope with the disability you’re still challenged with today?

SO: It helps me to cope an enormous amount because it’s when I’m creating art I’m in my own space and my art gives me pleasure like I’ve accomplished something, just like a child, and proof of what I could accomplish without formal training. You know, my paintings are consists of people and pure world that I have created in my own mind and my intuition works through an inner voice. So, yeah, it does help. It helps because if I wasn’t doing something; if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing it would be very difficult for me to be able to conform to society in somewhat of a way because I’m not an ordinary person.

VS: You’re an extra-ordinary person.

SO: Thank you.

VS: If I’m hearing you correctly it sounds like when you are able to connect with that inner voice and are in that zone of creativity it grounds you.

SO: Yeah.

VS: It kindda grounds you from the swings; the mood swings.

SO: Yeah, because I can get mad at my paintings and nobody knows. (Laughter).

VS: I know that you speak often to others about your disability and your art and how you use it to inspire people who also have the challenges of bipolar disabilities. How do you use your art to help others?

SO: Well, because I can accomplish a lot through my illness and a lot of people with bipolar or disabilities sometimes feel that their very limited to the things they can do or the medication makes them tired or they say “Oh I was going to do this” or “I love to do that” but sometimes they just can’t get it together. And when they see my struggle, when they see what I can produce then they know that you can accomplish something. You know, and it can be even greater than what you’ve even wanted it to be in the first place. It’s like “How did you do that?” And I just - I work and I just kept creating and I just was creating for myself, I’m really wasn’t creating for anybody, I created for myself and I went from there; killed my own demons and the things that made me sad.

VS: You healed by connecting with your truth rather than denying it.

SO: You can’t really ever deny the truth, it’s there; it rises higher than most. I am who I am, I will always be bipolar and I was asked at one time if there was a pill that I could use to cure it, if I would? And I would say no because that side of me helped me succeed.

VS: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s when you embrace it, rather than resist it; that it can become a powerful tool, a powerful resource for you. (Susan was agreeing to everything Valery was saying all this time.) Now, you’ve mentioned your father, and I know he was very important in your life and you’ve created a wall at a hospital and dedicated it to your father. Can you tell us what hospital and why the dedication?

SO: At Rush Memorial Hospital which is located here in Chicago, that’s the hospital that my father was treated for and I think they treated him very well. He was diagnosed within four weeks of dying, they diagnosed him in June or July and he died in August. So, I felt that my father, he had a very lonely life; he was orphaned during the war and my grandmother put my father in an orphanage during the war, she couldn’t take care of him so he spent many years being orphaned and then my grandmother got re-married and then they took my father out of the orphanage but he was probably around 13 at the time. And I am my father’s daughter through his eyes I see my own; him and I speak the same language. I am my father’s daughter and I always felt like I knew how he felt because of the same way that people treated me, the same way that people treated him so I believe that he should have had a much more active life and had been able to do the things that he was capable of doing but he didn’t take his medication as often as he should. And I think he suffered because he always went back to the past during certain times in his life, you know of being abandoned and I kindda felt the same way that he did. And when my father died I felt that there was something that needed to be done for him because of the beautiful person that he was; he was so giving, so giving to all of his kids; we were all pretty much his life and I wanted him to have something grand and so I wanted his name to be noted and I wanted him to be known. And so I went to the hospital and said I’ve like to start up a memorial fund through the proceeds of my artwork, my father died in the hospital, in your hospital and I worked with the head of philanthropy and the doctors that treated him and the women’s board to approve the artwork; it took two and a half years to get it up but I did it and now has a long lasting tribute to his life that will never come down and he will always be remembered.

VS: It’s a wonderful thank you gift that you gave to him. And actually to everybody else who has the opportunity to see that in that hospital.

SO: Yeah, I feel that way.

Tags: Bipolar Susan Olmetti Authenticity

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