A Young Painter Who's Really Skipping Ahead

Although we had total access, a substantive interview with Marla is not possible. With the assistance of her mother, Laura, we learn that her favorite color is pink (in earlier interviews, Marla had said it was yellow). Her favorite ice cream: strawberry. The artist recently completed kindergarten and is missing her two front teeth.

At one point another adult cornered her and asked about her plastic bracelet.

Q. "Does it glow?"

A. (After a really long pause) "Yes."

Other insights? Although we are no psychology major, Marla Olmstead seems completely normal and was giddy-fun-a-go-go to run around the gallery with her younger brother, Zane, and a couple of other apple-cheeked tots. She looked: happy.

Said Mom: "Marla is very excited. Hopefully, they'll be cookies." (There were.)

And cheese slices, watermelon cubes and meat pieces, and Charles Shaw wine for the adults (Trader Joe's, $1.99 a bottle).

Here's the back story:

Marla's father, Mark, is a manager at the Frito-Lay food processing plant in Binghamton, where Ruffles are made and 700 people are employed. His people -- father, uncle, grandfather -- were painters, amateur and professional. The pros were sign painters.

When Mark's father died, Mark bought some acrylic paint and supplies and started dabbling. Daughter Marla, at that point yet quite 2, reached out for the brushes and wanted to create. Dad indulged, he says, and the toddler impressed him enough that he yielded a canvas.

A friend of the family's hung a few of Marla's paintings in his Binghamton coffee shop. This was August 2003. A patron asked to buy one, and Marla's mom says she came up with a "crazy price" of $250, because she said she did not want to part with any of them and assumed no rational adult would pony up. She was wrong.

Then Binghamton artist Brunelli plugged into the Marla mix and held a gallery show, and the local paper, the Press & Sun-Bulletin, ran a piece (favorite Marla animal: pigs). The New York Times followed up, and her work soon started fetching several thousands of dollars as collectors snapped up the Marlas.