![]() Olan, who is 40 and until two years ago used to make a living doing hair and makeup for fashion magazines, also has a thing about color. ''My media now is I take pictures, I paint on them, and I create different things,'' he said, ''so it's a combination of digital and plastic and acrylic - all the things that I think are modern art utensils for today.'' The artist's technique in creating the 30-inch-by-36-inch portraits involves a mix of elements. This batch will remain on display until at least the end of this month. The first six portraits went up in March, and the subjects got to take them home when the second batch arrived in late May. ![]() I was so in shock, I couldn't believe it was me. ''You see yourself in the mirror every day, and you don't know what other people see,'' said Yania Frias, one of the tellers. Being the subject of Olan's art has been an eye-opener for them, too. Thanks to the paintings, the women don't see themselves as simply that, either. ''I'd hear the women say they got so many compliments.'' The customers, he said, ''no longer see them as a teller at the bank.'' ![]() ''I just thought it was amazing,'' he added. He said he noticed a complete change in attitude toward these women when the pictures were installed: ''People saw them, you know, because they looked.'' Or they talk a certain way where they don't see the person as an individual.'' But people forget, because they go to the bank and they just do their thing, and sometimes they have to wait in line, and they talk down to them. Of the women, he added: ''They're just wonderful people. ''I thought it was the coolest thing to do these portraits of them,'' said Olan, who is blond and handsome and, in his fresh painter's whites, looks as if he could paint more than canvases - not just houses but the whole town. At first the women were skeptical about the idea, but when he showed up with his camera to take the photos he would build his paintings on, they knew he meant business. Why not paint the women in the bank? So he did, all 13 of them, including the six tellers and their manager, Ms. One artist whose work was shown was Olan, who has exhibited at such places as the Photo District Gallery in Chelsea and Ward-Nasse Gallery in SoHo, and has portrayed such famous figures as the dancer Susan Jaffe and the singer Rufus Wainwright. But the whole thing really started because Carla Settle, the branch manager, wanted to do something about all those blank walls in her branch and about two years ago started exhibiting the work of local artists.
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