Olga Volchkova
Classically trained in painting and restoration, Olga Volchkova joined an important post-Soviet iconostasis journeyman team in the early 1990's. In her current icons, she canonizes herbs, flowers, and other plants: a secular continuation of that revival. As an avid gardener, who grew up partly in a subsistence farming village, she's a keen student of natural morphology, and the history of human-plant interaction. Her specialties include the rigorous use of processes from artisan and fine art traditions. She was the concluding subject in Christopher Alexander’s software experiment ‘Gatemaker’, which facilitates unfolding natural structure. She teaches icon painting at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon.