ANDREW WYETH: "It (Olson House) was monumental, but I had the feeling that the house was made of thin boards, not real timbers; I felt that it was something like the game "pick up sticks," which one day the house would look like. ... I wanted "Weatherside" to be a true portrait of the house - not a picturesque portrait, but one I'd be satisfied to carry around in my wallet to look at, because I knew this house couldn't last. I did it purely for myself. I had this feeling that it wouldn't be long before this fragile, crackling-dry, bony house disappeared. I'm very conscious of the ephemeral nature of the world. There are cycles. Things pass. They do not hold still. My father's death did that to me."
TILLMAN CRANE: "The building is essentially a 19th century house maintained in a state of arrested decay."
PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Reflections While Shooting at Olson House, Part 6: After a long morning of shooting through windows of the main house, I wandered into the barn. Soon the house and barns would be closed to us and open to the daily pilgrimage of tourists. In a back corner of the barn these webs of death flooded by light grabbed my lens. I shot multiple exposures knowing that the dynamic range was too great for my camera to encompass both bright spots and shadows, that if I bracketed carefully I could reassemble the whole image in my computer. However, when I saw the power of this white light flooding in, it reminded me of a Hieronymous Bosch painting I saw in Venice where souls entering heaven after death pass through what looks like a long concrete culvert toward similar light. I've left my image un-recomposited with burned out highs.
