Soul Mates © 2012
During a recent studio visit, a curator from a museum asked me to describe my process. He wanted to understand what Scanography really is in both a technical sense and in an artistic sense. HIs admitted knowledge was that I lay things on the scanner and capture the image. Easy right? Well, not quite. In fact, not even close. This blog entry is for that curator and everyone else who doesn't really totally understand what I'm doing. I'm warning you right now that this is about to get wordy.
First, I want to say that the way I work, isn't the way every artist working in scanner photography works. Just like painting, drawing, traditional photography and sculpture, every artist has their own approach or method that gets them to the place they want to be. I know that my process has evolved over many years. I studied traditional art making methods at art school and initially worked in printmaking because the idea of multiple prints was very appealing to me. I did a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of drawing to study the physical structure of objects, and figures. I spent quite a bit of my early career as an artist painting. I liked photorealism and I strived to depict my subjects as if they were photographs. Until one day when I had an epiphany, "save yourself some time and just take photographs". At that point which was nearly 20 years ago, I took a series of photo classes as a post graduate student and learned quite a bit about black and white photography, honed my compositional skills and really considered what it was that I wanted to communicate. I was also teaching myself how to use PhotoShop. Right about then my photo professor, Jan Kather, introduced me to capturing images using a scanner and all bets were suddenly off. I had finally found my medium and set off to discover how to really use it well. That was 1998.
My technical process reflects all of the various incarnations I've had as an artist. First, Scanography is part photography although it's a somewhat distant relative. Many photographers have actually told me they don't think it's photography at all and they would prefer to think of it as digital art. It's true that I do not use a camera of any kind and many photographer's believe that if you aren't using a camera then it isn't photography. Of course, if that's the qualifier then neither is a photogram, shadow catching or xerox art. Since those art forms fall into photography, I'm going to conclude that Scanography is a legitimate off-shoot as well. But, given that, I will say that my work is really a combination of three or four main practices of art. One of those is photography/digital imaging. I scan my subjects at high resolutions and I manipulate them with PhotoShop. Secondly, many of my works are actually partially constructed. Lately I've become really fascinated with building little models and then capturing those with my scanner.
First, I want to say that the way I work, isn't the way every artist working in scanner photography works. Just like painting, drawing, traditional photography and sculpture, every artist has their own approach or method that gets them to the place they want to be. I know that my process has evolved over many years. I studied traditional art making methods at art school and initially worked in printmaking because the idea of multiple prints was very appealing to me. I did a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of drawing to study the physical structure of objects, and figures. I spent quite a bit of my early career as an artist painting. I liked photorealism and I strived to depict my subjects as if they were photographs. Until one day when I had an epiphany, "save yourself some time and just take photographs". At that point which was nearly 20 years ago, I took a series of photo classes as a post graduate student and learned quite a bit about black and white photography, honed my compositional skills and really considered what it was that I wanted to communicate. I was also teaching myself how to use PhotoShop. Right about then my photo professor, Jan Kather, introduced me to capturing images using a scanner and all bets were suddenly off. I had finally found my medium and set off to discover how to really use it well. That was 1998.
My technical process reflects all of the various incarnations I've had as an artist. First, Scanography is part photography although it's a somewhat distant relative. Many photographers have actually told me they don't think it's photography at all and they would prefer to think of it as digital art. It's true that I do not use a camera of any kind and many photographer's believe that if you aren't using a camera then it isn't photography. Of course, if that's the qualifier then neither is a photogram, shadow catching or xerox art. Since those art forms fall into photography, I'm going to conclude that Scanography is a legitimate off-shoot as well. But, given that, I will say that my work is really a combination of three or four main practices of art. One of those is photography/digital imaging. I scan my subjects at high resolutions and I manipulate them with PhotoShop. Secondly, many of my works are actually partially constructed. Lately I've become really fascinated with building little models and then capturing those with my scanner.
Paradigm Shift © 2012
Paradigm Shift © 2012 is a perfect example of how my work has taken a constructed direction. For this image I wanted to communicate the idea of rising out of ruin and going toward a higher existence. I started by building a tiny ladder. Actually I built five ladders until I got one that I thought would work well. They were lashed together using sticks and hemp cord. I wanted a human, hand-made look to them, to convey the idea that change is of our own making. Once I had the ladder, I set about building a small, temporary construction around it. I gathered rocks to represent barren lands, rusty mechanical parts to represent industrial decay, even an old rusty key to represent the idea that old solutions don't always open the doors we need opened now. I guess one could say this constructed portion is part additive sculpture and part assemblage. This was then scanned at a really high resolution. I scanned an apple separately and composited it in later, in PhotoShop. I wanted it to be much smaller than the actual scale would allow. The apple represents knowledge or higher thinking. Or maybe something forbidden that seems out of reach but can be gotten to through hard work. You as the viewer can decide. I lay the groundwork and fill my art with symbols but you as the viewer get to connect the dots. What fun!
Alpha & Omega © 2011
Next comes the drawing and painting skills. Alpha and Omega © 2011 is a good example to discuss in that vein. For Alpha and Omega, I composited two separate images together, the pigeon skeleton and the robin's egg. Again, these images had to be done separately because of scale differences. PhotoShop was used to put these two together. Drawing skills were really important because in order to make it look real, I had to understand how light and shadow work. That's a skill one picks up from years of drawing and painting. If you look really closely at this image you will notice the subtle shadows behind the skeleton that project onto the inside of the shell. This adds to the reality of the image. I needed to create that. It wasn't there originally. Another way that drawing skills are used here is that scans have a really short depth of field. They tend to look rather flat in their unmanipulated state. Depth of field is the field of sharp focus from near to far. It can be anywhere from about an inch to perhaps 3 or 4 inches if you work at it. To create all of the dimension you are seeing in the completed image I literally draw with light and shadow into the images. I create highlights and shadows where there were none. Ocasionally I need to actually paint in a part that isn't there. That is true with Soul Mates © 2012, the two grasshopper image at the top of this post. That grasshopper had a missing leg and a missing antennae. This meant I had to create it by painting it. Here's where the skills I learned as a budding photorealist painter come into play in my current work. Sometimes I have to fix a missing part. It's really time consuming to do this and I admit that I try to avoid having to, but when push comes to shove and I want something that isn't there I resort to painting it in. Also from the realm of painting comes color manipulation skill. Understanding how color works comes from years spent painting. Knowing how to mix the colors I want to see comes from time spent learning color theory through practice.
Common Valor 1: Bond of Unity Medal
All of those artistic skill sets, photography, digital imaging, construction, painting and drawing , add up to the skill set I tap into to create my work. It isn't just laying something on a scanner and pushing a button. Yes, there are people out there creating images that are just exactly that but, most of those images aren't really art, they are experimentation. Yes, experimentation is where it begins but art is something bigger than any of that. In fact, art is much more than my technique. What makes my work art is concept. Concept, or idea, is where all of my work really begins. Like many artists, I keep a sketchbook. I record my ideas as they happen and then later I come back to them and figure out how I can make them work as an artwork. Common Valor 1: Bond of Unity Medal is a conceptual piece in a series. It took two years for this work to come into being from the initial flash of insight I had while visiting a military museum at Arlington National Cemetery. The basic idea or concept for this series was that medals honored struggles, battles or actions of those in the military. My conceptual twist was that all humans go through struggles, battles or transitions that they meet with similar bravery, loss and dignity. I wanted to create honorable medals that would celebrate the extraordinary efforts of ordinary citizens. This series explores that thought.
So, in conclusion, my art work is the culmination of technology, technique, a unique skill set and conceptual thinking. I marry those things together to create the work that I do. It is so much more than laying something on a scanner and pushing a button and hopefully, after reading this blog entry, you, the reader, have a better understanding of my work.
So, in conclusion, my art work is the culmination of technology, technique, a unique skill set and conceptual thinking. I marry those things together to create the work that I do. It is so much more than laying something on a scanner and pushing a button and hopefully, after reading this blog entry, you, the reader, have a better understanding of my work.
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