Art to wear: Art Center mounts Kermit Oliver scarf exhibit

The bold, detailed scarves designed by Waco artist Kermit Oliver won international attention and form the subject of a new Art Center Waco exhibit.

After opening in 2021 with wall-hung canvases by acclaimed Waco artist Kermit Oliver, Art Center Waco takes a second look at the art he created on wearable fabric: his vibrantly colored, detailed and highly-prized scarves for French fashion house Hermès.

“Hermès in the Heart of Texas: The Art of Kermit Oliver” opens a 10-week run at Art Center Waco on Friday, offering a comprehensive view of Oliver’s three-decade long collaboration with the Parisian fashion designer, 16 designs printed largely on silk, but also cashmere wool, and one fabric design used for a shirt.

The show, impressively curated by Waco artist Andrea La Valleur-Purvis, features all 16 designs, from the first “Pani La Shar Pawnee” in 1984 to his last, 2014’s “Vie Sauvage,” and largely drawn from local collectors. The exhibit not only contains scarves, but Hermès’ books such as “How to Tie a Hermès Scarf,” a pop-up book featuring Oliver’s “Pony Express” scarf and Laia Graves’ new “The Story of the Hermès Scarf.”

WATCH NOW: “Hermès in the Heart of Texas: The Art of Kermit Oliver” opens a 10-week run at Art Center Waco on Friday, offering a comprehensive view of Oliver’s three-decade long collaboration with the Parisian fashion designer.

Waco artist Kermit Oliver talks with exhibit curator Andrea La Valleur-Purvis about his scarves with Kachina dolls, part of the "Hermes in the Heart of Texas" exhibit opening Friday.

The scarves show the convergence of Hermès’ taste for themes of the American West, such as native North Americans and Texas wildlife, and Oliver’s sharp eye for detail, executed with Hermès’ standards for excellence.

La Valleur-Purvis said each scarf took about two years to produce, from Oliver’s initial colored pen-and-ink works on watercolor paper to Hermès’ silk printing and final product. Each color in a scarf required a separate plate and printing by hand. A typical Oliver work might have as many 40 distinct colors to reproduce and with attention to the fine black lines of his drawing.

Most scarves measured approximately 35 inches square with runs of 2,000 copies, although some occasions prompted larger runs and some designs were reprinted years later with Hermès designers substituting new colors. After printing, Hermès artisans would roll and stitch the edges by hand. “This is Hermès’ signature craftsmanship,” La Valleur-Purvis noted.

Mannequin heads show ways to wear a Hermes scarf.

Oliver was the first American artist to design a Hermès scarf and over the years his reputation grew among collectors in Europe and the United States to where a new run of an Oliver scarf often sold out by the time the scarves reached Hermès’ stores. Scarves that sold for several hundred dollars in the 1980s and 1990s now are valued in the thousands of dollars.

The show opens about a week before Oliver’s 80th birthday. The soft-spoken artist, retiring and quiet by nature, visited the gallery earlier this week to see the exhibit and found it had pieces he had not seen in decades.

He considered the scarves a separate body of work from the paintings and drawings that made up most of his artistic career — the Houston gallery that carried his paintings, for instance, didn’t sell any scarves — but he created them in much the same manner.

Oliver started with deep research into the appearance, history and meaning of his subjects. Then came the underlying framework of lines on paper that determine the geometry of the piece, the arrangement of objects on invisible squares and circles. Unlike his paintings, where subjects were oriented as if by gravity, many of his scarf squares had objects aligned to the square’s four sides or along corner-to-corner diagonals.

Hopi Kachina dolls proved some of Oliver’s most popular scarf designs.

Next came the painstaking work of drawing the people, animals and motifs. “Always my drawings under the designs were more detailed because I was a poor painter,” he said. “After the pencil work is put in, it’s pretty quick.”

The detail and colors of his work initially had Hermès’ designers shaking their heads, but that changed over time with designers volunteering to work on an Oliver project, the artist said. The artistic respect worked both ways as the Waco artist appreciated how the color changes the French designers would make on reprints gave a freshness to his original designs. His relationship with Hermès also opened the door for Oliver, a Waco postal employee for his salaried job, and his wife Katie to visit Paris twice.

The Waco exhibit reintroduced Oliver to pieces he hadn’t seen in decades as well as the memories they contained. One time Hermès questioned why a 15th-century Dutch sailing ship was placed in his scarf featuring Christopher Columbus rather than a Spanish one. He pointed out the theme was the European discovery of North America. “I had to explain to them that it was an allegory,” he said.

Oliver’s scarf commemorating the Pony Express works in a reference to his wife in a fake postal stamp.

Another time, the solemn expression he gave an indigenous woman in tribal regalia was questioned. The reason, he countered, was that smiling in some tribal traditions was discouraged as not being dignified, particularly for a leader.

In other scarves, he pointed out details that showed a sly sense of humor. The Katieville that appears on a Pony Express mail stamp was no actual location, but borrowed from his wife Katie’s name. Katie, incidentally, received three copies of each scarf he created. The four mammals in a scarf on Texas wildlife — longhorn steer, wolf, mustang and cougar — were all mascots from Texas universities.

The exhibit opens Friday with a public reception at 6 p.m. and runs through Oct. 14.

Exhibit curator Andrea La Valleur-Purvis shows how details and colors changed in reprints of some scarves.

One of Oliver’s designs for French fashion house Hermès was turned into a shirt’s fabric.

When, where: Friday through Oct. 14 at Art Center Waco, 701 S. Eighth St. Opening reception, 6 p.m. Friday.

Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays.

Admission: Free. $10 suggested donation for opening reception.

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