Olivia Kays
oliviakaysart@gmail.com
Kays is a mixed media painter who works with intimate femininity, ornamentation, and domestic labor embedded in handmade processes. Working across sewing, embroidery, crochet, beading, collage, and painting, she approaches each medium as a small language of care, woven together to form a cohesive visual vocabulary. Guided by tenderness, sentimentality, attentiveness, and her intuition, Kays treats her works as objects to be repaired, cultivated to, and lovingly tended into being. Her practice values the womanly, the decorative, and the hand-touched gestures historically coded as feminine.
She is continuing her schooling and getting her Master of Fine Arts at the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting. Her work is currently spread throughout Indiana and Maryland for permanent displays and exhibitions.
Education
MFA 2025-Current. LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art
BFA 2022-2025. Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts, Purdue University
Internships
Fall 2025-Spring 2026: Graduate Teaching Internship, Undergraduate classes at Maryland Institute College of Art.
Spring 2025: Gallery Assistant, The Weather Station Gallery and Artist-Run Project Space.
Recent Exhibitions:
Ongoing
Featured Artist, Wall Installations, Adee’s Tulips, Fells Point, Maryland.
Featured Artist, Solo Wall Installation, The Eleventh House Coffee, Lafayette, Indiana.
2026
OUT OF ORDER Benefit Exhibition and Sale 2026, Maryland Art Place Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland.
Penn Journal of Arts, Summer 2026 Show, Digital Exhibition.
Solo Wall Installation with Ongoing Artwork Display, The Lobby by Greyhouse Coffee, Lafayette, Indiana. 2025-2026. (Work displayed throughout coffee shop with a dedicated wall in the dining room.)
2025
Under 2500 Benefit Exhibition and Sale 2025, Maryland Art Place Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland.
What Use Is The Ocean? Graduate Painting Fall Show, Riggs & Leidy Gallery, Fred Lazarus IV Center, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland.
Purdue Senior Exhibition, “Untitled” 2025, Patti and Rusty Rueff Gallery, Pao Hall, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.
National Society of Arts & Letters Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition 2025, Free In My Heart! (Featured Artwork), FAR Gallery, Bloomington, Indiana. (Featured on promotional flyers)
Purdue Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, Robert L. Ringel Gallery, Stewart Center, Purdue University,
West Lafayette, Indiana. (Awarded First Place in Painting.)
Solo Display in Art Office on the Third Floor of the Rueff School of Design, Pao Hall, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. (2023-2025.)
2024
Purdue Juried Photography Exhibition - 2024, Rueff Gallery, Pao Hall, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.
Emptiness- 2024 (3rd Annual Exhibition and Promotion,) Biafarin, International Online Exhibition.
Anti-War 2024 (3rd Annual Exhibition and Promotion,) Biafarian, International Online Exhibition.
People - 2024 (2nd annual Exhibition and Publication,) Biafarian, International Online Exhibition.
Existence: Birth, Life, Death - 2024 (Annual Juried Exhibition, Promotion, Sales,) Biafarian, International Online Exhibition.
Boundless - 2024 (Annual Juried Exhibition, Promotion, Sales,) Biafarian, International Online Exhibition.
True Beauty - 2024 (3rd Annual Exhibition, Promotion, Sales,) Biafarian, International Online Exhibition.
Still Life - 2024 (2nd Annual Juried Exhibition, Publication, Sales,) Biafarian, International Online Exhibition.
2023
Indianapolis Art Center College Gallery Invitational, Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, Indiana.
HMVC Gallery [Unveiling The Layers,] Displayed in New York on Screens in Times Square, Intentional Online Exhibition.