I am an artist interested in how words and pictures play together in communication, whether in everyday life or within the narrower setting of the arts. Trained as a painter (MA Painting, UC Berkeley), and as an art historian (PhD Semiotics and Art History, Brown), at different times in my career I have been a professor in both of these subject areas (UC Hayward, Montana State, RISD, Texas Tech, Univ. of Texas School of Information). In addition, I have been a senior digital media designer for three Fortune 500 computer companies (Tandy, AST, Chief Designer at Gateway) and hold 22 US Patents. Recently I gave a series of six lectures entitled "How Pictures Work, from Cave to AI."
Pictures are Everywhere
Pictures are everywhere and they are no longer moored to their original time, place, or reason for creation. Scrolling the web is a bit like beachcombing where all manner of pictures have washed up on the shore inviting gathering. One may simply “pick up” some attractive selection of these pictures to make a collection. Or, as in the case of my work, use these pictures as raw material, pictorial pigment, to be arranged and juxtaposed in the creation of, perhaps, strange and wonderful mashups to be roved visually.
And words. They have a long history of engagement in juxtaposition with other words, as if sentenced to do so. And when juxtaposed with pictures, they have normally performed an explanatory role. In my work, words are free to seek improbable associations with one another and to float freely like clouds over pictorial terrain to which they owe no obligation. This latter, especially in my books.
