Meet Oliver Dabao | Visual Artist & Bicycle Tour Guide

We had the good fortune of connecting with Oliver Dabao and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Oliver, what’s the most important lesson your business/career has taught you?
Don’t be too precious with your work. Become comfortable with imperfection. In the time I’ve spent pursuing a creatively fulfilling life, I’ve had to come to terms with the reality that seeking perfection was a hindrance to the creative act. My growth as an artist and ability to understand my perspective required constant iteration. It required making something, finishing it, processing it, and creating something new the next time I chose to revisit the idea. The perfect canvas is a blank one. The moment a mark is made on it, it’s a controlled crash. There were moments early in my career that I held ideas of what a piece could be or what it should look like too dearly. The process of iteration and reiteration would come to a stall and I would loose the ability to create playfully. It was during these moments of allowing myself to make mistakes and even at times hoping they would happen that I experienced the most growth. After continuous iteration, I’ve come to find that the more I leaned into these mistakes, the more I allowed myself to create. The more I allowed myself to create, the more my own perspective became clearer to me.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m a multimedia artist that works mostly in the realm of video, collage, and painting. I create under the name Joli (pronounced like “jolly”). I like to think the most defining aspect of a Joli piece, regardless of the medium, is how unrefined it is. I’ve always been fascinated by process. I want a piece to almost explain to an observer how it was made. I seek to make my train of thought during the creative process be as apparent as possible in the finished piece. The pieces I create are almost unfinished in a sense, I want the audience to feel like they’ve found a piece in the midst of it being created.

I consider myself to be very early on in my career. There’s nothing but excitement, and at this point, I feel like I’m most proud of having stuck to it so far. The path was never really a straightforward one. I loved drawing dinosaurs as a kid and the margins of my notebooks were filled with Volcom and Etnies logos. My sister taught me how to draw block letters in the second grade. I took studio art in high school and learned Final Cut Pro my senior year. I studied film at USC, worked at a big agency after graduation, and quickly realized desk work was not for me. I decided to pursue freelance creative work and said yes to any job that came my way. I worked as a storyboard illustrator, video editor, production assistant, and tour guide for a cycle adventure company to sustain my living while I shot music videos with friends and painted to practice and build the Joli portfolio. I’ve only recently started selling the paintings I’ve been making over the past four years and hope to exhibit them soon. I’m just about wrapping up the Joli website and launching it in May along with a line of merchandise that I view as an extension of my visual practice.

Whether or not the path has been easy is a matter of perspective. I never quite know where the next paycheck is coming from, I’ve lost track of the all nighters a while ago, and the pursuit of a creative career has required a “day in, day out” mentality to a degree I haven’t experienced before. I spent most of 2022 launching a blockchain project as a founder and visual lead only for it to completely fall apart later in the year after months of creating hundreds of hand drawn visual assets, connecting with investors, and community building. I’ve launched more failed projects than successful ones. But betting on myself and my intuition has been the easiest decision I’ve ever made. There are people out there who work jobs they don’t want to work just to get by. The path is paved with uncertainty but having the conviction that I know I am doing something I love and understanding the privilege that comes with that makes every step along the way feel easy in some sense.

When people interact with Joli, I hope they get a glimpse of the journey I’m on and find some common ground with it in some way or form. I hope I encourage people to recognize the reality in the abstraction I present, to notice art in the places you may not expect, and to feel even a modicum of the joy and playfulness I feel when I create. Whether it be a music video, painting, website, or t-shirt, I hope they see that everything I create is a part of a process that is unfolding itself in a way that I too am processing along with them.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
A day along PCH is never a bad idea. We could have lunch at Cafe Habana, sip on a marg or two, and walk across to the Malibu Lagoon. Since we’re already in the area, maybe we can do Cholada for some curry or pad sew ew for sunset. If my friend were a cycling enthusiast, we could start the day with coffee and pastries at Minotti or grab a breakfast burrito at Great White and ride along the beach path. When the path ends, we’d hop on PCH for a tad and turn up Topanga Canyon for a 2,000ft climb to Saddle Peak for a vista of LA. We’d ride right back down into Venice for a $5 cheeseburger at the Window. If we’re thirsty afterwards, a pit stop at Hinanos for a brew and some friendly faces would do the trick. Since I live in Mar Vista, we have to do the local eats as well. Empanada Place for Argentine style empanadas, Brother’s Cousin taco stand for an El Pastor burrito, Baja California Tacos for fish tacos, Mitsuwa for Santouka Ramen, and Yama for sushi or mushroom katsu. We would definitely hit El Chucho for a night out as well.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My family has never ceased encouraging me. Their love gets me through the moments when self doubt becomes overbearing. Gotta shoutout my housemates too. Not only do they deal with the constant smell of drying acrylic and scattered canvases, but they remind me not to take it all too seriously.

Website: jolijolijoli.com

Instagram: @ohdabs @thejolifeed

Image Credits
All shot by me.