Project 3: Website

Statement of intent

The website I created in honor of St. Mary's Shoe Tree explores ideas about how it came to be, what it stands for, and its greater significance for the SMCM community. As an iconic part of the campus, the Shoe Tree has many different meanings for many different people. For some it is a piece of interactive art, for others it is a monument and living tradition, and for others still it is an eyesore and a waste of perfectly good shoes. The website itself is, of course, meant to be tongue in cheek, seemingly innocuous at first glance but morally questionable upon further investigation--much like the tree itself! Really, I wanted to emphasize the fact that,  whatever peoples' beliefs about the Shoe Tree, whatever their philosophical, environmental, moral, or official stance on it might be, at its very root (pun intended) the Shoe Tree is fundamentally about sex, and everybody at St. Mary's College knows it.

Project 2: Vector Self Portrait

FINAL

First Draft

Digital Artist Post 2

Brian D. McMillan is a photographer turned digital artist whose preoccupation with color and form led him not only to embrace the digital art medium but to strive to "learn the very basis on which it works". As both artist and Systems Administrator for various computer graphics research and development projects, McMillan has made it his life's work to explore the relationship between creativity and technology. Whether it is with art or with the technology that produces that art, he thrives on breaking down the pieces of the whole in order to understand it from the inside out and to develop an appreciation for the value of its composite parts. Throughout the course of his development as a digital artist, McMillan moved through phases of photographic and representational art, experimenting with digital photorealism before finally finding his niche and his passion through non-representational art. According to McMillan, he has come to be more interested in exploring what makes up an image than in the actual image itself. Working with original photographs, which he scans and manipulates in programs like Adobe Photoshop, Aldus PhotoStyler, Micrografx Designer, and Picture Publisher, McMillan dissects images looking to uncover an essential area of color or form. Then, through layering, repetition, and compositing, he creates a new form that is completely divorced from the original image and its context. What makes his work unique, however, is how technology and creativity intersect for McMillan as he strives to uncover the underlying elements of an image as well as its "computer potential",  how it relates to the digital makeup of the image. To illustrate this, many of his later works have titles that are reference or file names.

me-me

By creating completely new images from key areas of color and form,  McMillan strikes away from general trends in digital photorealism where artists layer and manipulate images to create both form and context in their work. Rather than providing a context or telling a story through his art, McMillan eliminates any preconceived context by rendering his image completely unrecognizable. In doing so, he compels viewers to approach the piece with complete subjectivity, drawing on their own experiences to create a context and thereby relate to the image on a much more personal and personalized level.

Grid2

McMillan explores an interesting concept with his assertion that an image is essentially made up of key forms and colors, and that when these 'seed' areas are fragmented and manipulated they can take on a form all its own that establishes an entirely unique relationship with the individual viewer. Many artists have experimented with form and context in a similar way, but McMillan's work takes it further by connecting this fundamental concept of nonrepresentational art with digital technology itself. That the underlying elements of an image have "computer potential" is an intriguing notion that brings the relationship between art and technology to a whole new level. It is basically saying that, at its root, art and technology are the same and that digital art is the space in which the two can truly come together. My only critique is that I would like to see more work from this artist exploring and expanding on these ideas. The underlying concept, I think, is stronger and more compelling than any of the work itself.

Heart of the Matter

Line Drawing

ORIGINAL

LINE COPY

Digital Artist Post 1

Gale Franey is an artist from Vancouver who specializes in digital art, photography, graphic design, and flash animation. Her art ranges from promotional work to childrens' book illustrations. Though she is still in school, studying to perfect her craft and master the digital art medium, Franey has been creating digital art for over a decade, and, according to her website, her art has been featured in an award winning children's book. Franey credits her past involvement with the YMCA and her extensive work with refugees and the homeless with having given her insight into "the full gamut of human experience", which she explores through her artwork.

All Night I Rose and Fell

Much of Franey's work relies heavily on an element of fantasy, which she uses as a medium to explore and appeal to human emotion.  There has long been a working relationship between the fantasy genre and digital media, and Franey is one of many artists who have capitalized on current technology that allows them to take a real-life image and doctor it to fit into a fantastical world of their own making. Franey herself typically starts with photographs that she has taken of family members, friends and models, which she then alters using programs like Photoshop, relying heavily on layer masks and similar tools in order to fuse images and combine worlds. She uses digital media as a way to break out of the boundaries of reality, depicting fairies, angels, dragons, and other mythical figures in her art. The highly romantic nature of Franey's work lends itself to an escapist quality, but it moves beyond this to evoke the unconscious feelings, hopes, fears and aspirations that shape human experience, reflecting these back at viewers through fantastical symbolism. Some of her work even goes so far as to tackle serious issues like abuse and addiction. Ultimately, Gale Franey's art transcends the bounds of rationality to tap into the irrational and purely emotional realm of human experience, and through that window we as viewers can touch base with the deepest and darkest parts of ourselves, if we so choose.

Behind the Attic Door

The success of Franey's work, both conceptually and aesthetically, is somewhat variable and indicative of an artist who is secure in her voice but continuing to develop her skill with the digital medium. Conceptually speaking, her art is highly narrative, but there are times when the story and the message behind it are not always clear. In some cases her images are so busy that the viewer has a hard time figuring out what to focus on and struggles to follow the flow, which makes it difficult to appreciate the piece as a whole. From a technical and aesthetic standpoint, the quality of Franey's work varies. She seems to struggle  consistently with the coherency of her pictures, particularly when it comes to integrating figures taken from real-life photographs into her chimerical landscapes. She might do well to focus greater attention on face/body proportions, perspective, clearly established boundaries between fore, middle, and background and deliberately grounding her figures in relation to each. That being said, Franey's images range from whimsically beautiful to grotesquely haunting, and they usually are successful at eliciting the intended emotional response from viewers.

The Censor's Apprentice

Project 1: Digital Remix

Scanned images for the digital remix project