Evo

Photo Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer A front view of a one-story rectangular building with windows. On the wall are geometric lines and shapes of multiple colors.

Evo

Location: 395 Western Ave., Allston

In 2017, local artist David Teng Olsen worked in the January cold to create this 170 ft long mural at 395 Western Avenue. Titled Evo, it is Olsen's biggest piece to date. Comprised of bright geometric shapes and hand-painted illustrations, Evo was inspired by the history of Allston as well as the people that spoke with Olsen while painting the mural.

"I named it 'Evo' because I could tell the neighborhood was changing and growing," said Olsen to Zone 3. "The people that stopped to talk and tell their stories and the history of the neighborhood were all translated into the expressive lines speckled about the composition."

Photo Credit: Zone 3 The artist, David Teng Olsen, is on a ladder, working on the mural. Olsen is wearing a gray beanie, black puffer jacket, and red-brown pants.

Olsen is an art professor at Wellesley College and new media artist (a form of media that relies on digital technology) interested in collaborative and interactive experiences using both traditional and experimental visual techniques. Olsen spent many years working as a bioengineer and scientific illustrator, which heavily informs his work. For him, art is a venue to thoroughly explore the science that intrigued him and bring it into a different light.

Made possible by the Zone 3 Initiative, Isenberg Projects, Graffito SP, and Harvard University.