Artist Statement
I like to make beautiful things, but it wasn’t my goal to create abstract digital art. Trained in ceramics, I revere "the object,” how it was made, and especially maker’s marks. The antithesis of digital art, it would seem.
After years as a maker I started looking for new inspiration. I wanted a medium with a lighter environmental footprint that would still allow me to create exquisitely crafted pieces by hand. Determined, I went back to school where I learned that perspective and ideas are more important than medium.
The inspiration to capture gesture arose from a collision of ideas. My ceramics career revolved around an unusual hand-building technique using finger manipulations and arm movements. Drawing class spurred me to think about line and gesture; ways to make it, how it communicates, impulse. When a photography professor asked what I liked to look at, lines were on my mind. Gesture became my subject.
My first effort capturing gesture involved a black groundcloth and salt. Next I tried making gestures in sand, shooting under harsh sunlight for strong contrast. Manipulating these shapes produced highly stylized graphic illustration. Forced inside on a bad-weather day I turned the scanner on, and the lights off.
I realize now that media, be it clay or pixels, provide an environment for artistic expression. Like other media pixels can be manipulated to produce texture and depth, and as it turns out show the hand of the maker.
After years as a maker I started looking for new inspiration. I wanted a medium with a lighter environmental footprint that would still allow me to create exquisitely crafted pieces by hand. Determined, I went back to school where I learned that perspective and ideas are more important than medium.
The inspiration to capture gesture arose from a collision of ideas. My ceramics career revolved around an unusual hand-building technique using finger manipulations and arm movements. Drawing class spurred me to think about line and gesture; ways to make it, how it communicates, impulse. When a photography professor asked what I liked to look at, lines were on my mind. Gesture became my subject.
My first effort capturing gesture involved a black groundcloth and salt. Next I tried making gestures in sand, shooting under harsh sunlight for strong contrast. Manipulating these shapes produced highly stylized graphic illustration. Forced inside on a bad-weather day I turned the scanner on, and the lights off.
I realize now that media, be it clay or pixels, provide an environment for artistic expression. Like other media pixels can be manipulated to produce texture and depth, and as it turns out show the hand of the maker.
Technical Statement
First a gesture is scanned. Next steps are isolating selections from the scan in photo-editing software, then recombining the selections to create something else. Further modification involves layering distorted copies of the original, changing color relationships, extracting selections from channels, pushing masks, and pulling every visual trick I can think of.
As evolution continues and something more painterly emerges, the fingerprints are sometimes harder to find in the final work, but only original scan source is used.
As evolution continues and something more painterly emerges, the fingerprints are sometimes harder to find in the final work, but only original scan source is used.