Colin Lapasky

I continually search for new and unexplored software and technologies to learn. My training as an artist never ceases, and there is at all times, something new to study and apply to my works. The technology of art constantly advances, creating limitless possibilities and reason to be continually learning. I am compelled to seek mediums that I am not comfortable with, constantly pushing what I know to achieve innovative compositions. I have an infatuation with numerous mediums of technology, allowing me to capture precise, accurate moments in time, and through conceptually driven ideas, tools permit me to alter them. I use everyday scenarios and customs to reinterpret the common notions in what they represent.

Mary Anne Benson

I am an artist because I live in a world saturated with images and I want to create my own and contribute my own view to that world. I am far less concerned than I should be about finished products—to me they are just residue of the real art, which lies in the process. My process involves mostly experimentation and play. Accidents and mistakes often take me in exciting new directions. In video, this takes the form of the evolution of my ideas, which always morph into something completely different along the way. In photography, my process is finding new ways to see something—the beauty in trash, the grotesque side of what is considered beautiful, the humor and surreal nature of mundane things. I like to work in places I walk by everyday, breaking out of the beeline of routine to discover something new to connect with. I love when people see me making images, because they sometimes stop and look where I was looking. To me it doesn’t matter if they see the same thing I saw, it’s probably best if they see something else or nothing at all. What matters is that they took a brief moment to break out and look for themselves. Finished works of art invite someone to see your point of view, your story, your take on the world. I revel in encountering the art of others, and am so happy that with digital technologies many more people can explore this sort of looking and self- expression. The world needs more stories and more points of view.

Adam Frizzell

Art is a unique medium of communication. Unlike text, speech or physical interaction, art possesses the ability to hold a viewer’s attention before any translation has occurred. The visual dynamics offered by a piece of art intrigue or disgust the viewer, forcing them to continue their witnessing until their curiosity is appeased and they have came to some conclusion or other about the meaning behind the work.

Focusing on this ability I choose to make art which has something to inform the viewer about. Aesthetic beauty, in my opinion, is secondary (and occasionally involuntary) to the potential communicative powers of art. My intention is to create works that inform or enlighten the viewer. The subject matter often addresses issues that I feel the general population should be more aware of – making my artwork into a kind of mirror to society. I tend to focus on the habits and choices that our collective species make and illuminate them in a way that becomes entertaining or offensive with less hope to cause an instance of change and more hope that I can foster a contemplation of one’s own behavior.

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Why do I make art? I don’t really know. It is something that I have always done. Even as a child, I had a compulsion to draw or otherwise make whatever image was swirling around in my mind. It is very personal to me, my works are like my children and I am reluctant to share them with the world. Maybe because I am afraid of what other people might say about them, that is mistreat my “children”. Or maybe I don’t really care how other people think, I just want to do what I want to do. As a young adult, I suppressed this compulsion to be “practical” and got a job in the business world so I could support myself, because everybody said nobody can support themselves as an artist. Recent life changing events have altered my thinking and I am pursuing what I want to do, not what is sensible or practical. Even if I have to go back into the business world, I will not give up making art again.

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I am trying to show others the two halves of my duality. My two halves are made up of “things that I perceive as normal” and “things that I internally label as abnormal”. I usually accept my physical and emotional separation from other people and the existence of duality as normal. I have internally labeled my and other people’s malleable sexuality and gender as abnormal. I see this malleability as a “frightening impulse” which I usually react against (again internally) violently. Although I have conflicts with my duality, I create my artwork as part of a process that reflects my attempt to create a balance between my two halves.
I am exploring methods outside of making personal artwork to reflect the balance that I am trying to create between my two halves. To begin my search, I pose a question: “Do other people relate to the concepts that I am trying to show in my work?” I then create artwork in a variety of mediums based on people’s verbal and written responses to this question.
I am adjusting my work to help others respond to it more easily. Part of this process involves continuing to experiment with my artwork by looking at a person’s connection to art objects, and by exploring an individual’s connections to other people. I continue to build on my successful experiments by creating new works that exploit my artwork’s connections to others.

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Emotionally driven conceptual art has always been something I have been interested in. Emotion is something I feel everyone can relate to so building a concept around it makes sense to me. Making art that will make the viewer think about what they are looking at or why it is made in the first place it usually the kind of result I am trying to achieve. Paying attention to the aesthetics is a very important characteristic when it comes to the overall appearance and presentation of the piece. Intentional detail is something I have constantly included in just about everything I have ever made. Details can range from a moth flying around a lamp in the background to the how well everything is rendered in the environment itself. This has always helped aesthetically improve the visual aspects of a particular piece. In addition, the aesthetics of the piece may also help with layering the work given that viewers might be interested only in the appearance, and must observe it once more to fully appreciate the meaning of the work. I am not normally against works that thrive purely on aesthetics, but including a well thought out concept can do nothing but strengthen the piece. Also, my concepts are typically not as direct or straight forward as they may appear. Keeping some of the narrative hidden along with trying to layer it with subplots can make for a very fascinating result. Viewers should be able to return to the piece and notice something entirely new when they view it yet again.

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When Brewster from Brewster’s Millions was finally able to reveal that he had spent the $30 million in order to get the $300 million, I thought about art. Art is like that, you know—like spending $30 million to get $300 million. But did you ever wonder what Brewster did with the $300 million after he got it? And did the conspirators who tried to obstruct Brewster’s attempts to gain his full inheritance really go to jail? Or did they just have attorneys who got them off the hook? Seriously, maybe Brewster forgave them because he was a nice guy. He seemed like a nice guy, when he and John Candy weren’t out philandering. It doesn’t seem, however, like Brewster was ever going to get to play for the Yankees. But, just because the sun comes up today, doesn’t mean it will come up tomorrow, so perhaps he did play for the Yankees eventually. He could get anybody out for three innings. But that’s the thing that escapes us, I guess, is we just don’t know what Brewster did after the movie. Hell, we don’t even know what he was up to for much of the period in which the movie was set. It would be impossible to document every minute of Brewster’s life for a month. I mean, I’m talking about something a bunch of people made: they spliced it together from take after take, probably out of sequence, into what should seem like a random series of scenes, but it somehow adheres into a linear narrative. It’s nearly magic, and I’m still not satisfied. And I keep mixing in that scene from the first—or maybe the second—episode of Quantum Leap when Sam was a ball player, and he talks to his dad who, in Sam’s day, or in the linearality of his own life—I mean, it’s time travel, so it gets confusing—is dead. His dad is dead, you see, but Sam has gone back in time, so he gets his dad on the phone. It’s pretty neat. So when I fill the lacunae—the anti-narrative space—left after Brewster’s big game—following his team’s humiliating defeat and his big speech to the assembled crowd—I insert that scene from Quantum Leap. It’s poignant. Anyway, I draw from another piece of work altogether to craft my own story, and I somehow associate those scenes with my own feelings of loss, reminiscences about time with my folks, imaginings of how it will feel when they die, sympathy for all those people who have lost parents—in short, the experience of the scenes becomes interwoven with everything that has contributed to the constitution of the feelings that are mine, that feel so personal and spontaneous, even though they are an inheritance, simulacra of authenticity. It all gets mixed in together with a presentation that I make for myself from an amalgam of Quantum Leap and Brewster’s Millions—two programs to which I had access originally only because of a confluence of resources and materials available to the artists (if you’ll grant the makers of Brewster’s Millions and the Leap—my pet name for Quantum Leap—that status), the color TV I had in my own home growing up, and myriad other conditions within and beyond my control. But when I make art, when I’m called to make something that may or may not be constituted as art, or when I’m called by art to make it, or when I am called an artist (which has never happened), I can’t help but wonder what Brewster did with that $300 million and how he lived his life after he was awarded it. I don’t think it was the intention of the people who made that film to inspire speculations regarding Brewster’s dying words or to establish any desire within viewers to splice scenes from Quantum Leap into the narrative of the movie. So, in a way, it doesn’t matter what I intend with or for my "art." Furthermore, it doesn’t matter whether I think my stuff is art or artsy or artistic; attributions are, ultimately, beyond my control. Personally, I am not trying to participate in some field of power in which my specific investment in the term “art” has a bearing on the symbolic, social, and material resources that are available for the production, distribution, and interpretation of…whatever. I don’t have positive material or symbolic investments in the term “art”--I don't ascribe the label to my work. Doing so would be to appropriate a term with which I would prefer to have a minimal association. But, again, ultimately, I have little control over such attributions. Honestly, I just want to know what Brewster did with that $300 million.

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I've always been fascinated by (and jealous of) artists. I have a lot of creativity in my mind, but translating it into reality has always been difficult for me. I never put much effort into finding the artist in me- until now. Going down this personal road less traveled has unveiled new insights for me. I'm enjoying finding new ways to channel my inner feelings without any pre-established boundaries or methodology. I'm going down this road not knowing where it's going, but enjoying myself nonetheless. I just stick my hands in art and make whatever I feel like making. Sometimes, I let other people take a look at the inner me.

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“Great art picks up where nature ends” Marc Chagall

One could argue that all design is a copy of something done before. I
would argue that the source of all design originated in nature and
there began the plagiarism. The structure of a spider’s web or the
replicating pattern of a seashell are both examples of concentric
design tools found in art as are the triangular models used by Winslow
and the Renaissance artists. Where would we be without the rule of
thirds? What feels most natural, most organic and appeals to our
senses is that which originated from nature.

One morning years ago I was running very early in the morning in
southern Arizona. As I approached the top of the mountain the night
stars merged with daylight. Just then a meteor shower began. It was
truly the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed. How could I ever
replicate that? Why would I try? Yet the experience impacted me.

Great design and art does impact me the same way that a work of nature
does. I do believe I carry those images with me in the same way. As
these images stimulate me, interest me they also influence my art. I
plagiarize them without meaning to.. replicating art, replicating
nature.

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My approach to creating artwork has gone through several changes in the past few years. Although this string of changes has in some way brought me to what I am working on in my current life, I have also begun to come to terms with the idea that my work is continually evolving. I will likely not find the answers I am looking for in my work; rather, I will continue to experiment with ideas and techniques, and evaluate my decisions as I work. Working with an intuitive approach, rather than a rigid, planned approach, has lent itself well to my concept of evolving artistic style.

Regarding subject, I am interested in sequencing events, be they personal histories, memories, stories, etc. I find perpetual curiosity in the way specific events relate to each other on an intimate and personal level.

Aesthetically, I am drawn toward abstract art and the ways in which some abstract artists are able to create moments of unique intimacy between the artwork and the viewer. For me, the absence of a direct narrative makes room for the viewer to contribute to the piece, thus enhancing its personal nature.

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I think about making art as meditation and a way of finding my Identity. I struggle to find my Identity because all living organisms, including humans, are born without their consent. Existing in this world was not our decision, but here we are, breathing. For me, Identity is something that is not granted, but something that needs to be established. That is why it is extremely important to ask ourselves who we are. Therefore, I choose to walk backwards—it is better to live my life looking back than to feel anxious about my unknown future. In this way I can establish my Identity so I do not feel empty. I look at life as a linear path towards death. As we walk along the path, we encounter the Future. I walk this linear path with my eyes looking back at my trails, to find a piece of my Identity. To me, the Past is something more rigid and solid than the Future because the Past is known to me already, but the Future remains unknown all the time. My artworks are reflections of my past. The Past makes us who we are today.

It is commonly known that we learn from everyday experience, train ourselves to adapt to the environment that surrounds us, and sometimes gain knowledge from the process of adaptation. Past experience plays a major role in forming an individual’s identity. Furthermore, if the individual is an artist, past experience is more likely to be reflected on pieces of art that are produced by the individual. That is basically the reason why having as various types of experiences as an individual can, making observations and analyzing the surroundings, and putting oneself in the suitable environment for learning are crucial. Today, for visual artists, learning from the surroundings has become more important, because art is everywhere, and it is changing rapidly. Visual art alone can take many different forms. It is in books, magazines, motion pictures, music, and it is on TV and the internet.

In a person’s life, complex emotions are present at all times. I state that due to my exceedingly emotional nature, and also my experience in South Korea, Canada, and the United States, my life is filled with emotions and different types of experiences. I had to live and survive alone in foreign countries since the age of 16, served in the Korean army as a member of Special Guard Team, as a military prison guard, and as a squad leader. I had at least one family member hospitalized for 15 long years of my life, and lost my mother in 2004. As an art student, I also have experience in producing various types of visual art such as painting, drawing, sculpture, hologram, robotics, photography, and 3D animation. Past years have turned my life into a library of various emotions and experiences, which is good for an artist.

In composition, I believe in diversity, unity, and balance. I start by deciding what colors to use, and then decide what type of emotion that the piece is going to evoke. After that, I look back at my personal experiences to remind myself of the time when I had that emotion. My personal emotions are expressed in order to visually establish my identity in the pieces. Color is one of the primary factors that I am greatly concerned about, regardless of the medium.

As a humanist, I am greatly fascinated by the fact that in many religious texts such as the Bible and Greek mythologies, humans are created to resemble gods. What do gods do? They create. We are not all sure if our ‘creator’ exists or not in reality, but we all know that religions are made by humans. Then, why would humans in those days come up with such religious texts telling us that humans resemble gods? I personally believe that it is because of the fact that we have an ability to create. We call ourselves the lord of all creation. Therefore, for me, creation is the most beautiful and humanistic thing to do. It is a way to be who we are.

I chose animation as my primary medium because of its expressive possibilities and inherent characteristics. Animation is an art form with infinite possibilities. It allows me to create an alternative world in a virtual space involving time. Through expression of emotions derived from my personal experience, and through use of editing, coloring and compositing, I seek to establish a unique and solid identity as an artist, and also, as an individual. In dictionaries, “to animate” means to give life. Through production of animation, we give life to something, just like gods in many religious texts do. Creating and giving life is the greatest thing a human can ever do.

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I make art in order to explore and communicate about the nature of reality. Art allows me to make visible, tangible traces of strange moments of confusion, awe, and speechlessness. It creates the opportunity to engage in criticism of the severe disconnectedness of modern life. I am interested in art that creates the opportunity connect the mind to the sweating, substantial presence of the human body and the earth's natural processes of synthesis and decay.

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It is my goal as an artist to express my emotions, life and soul in every piece I do. When a viewer takes in my artwork, it is my goal to have my piece touch a little piece of their soul. This involvement will ultimately give the viewer and me a connection not many professions can give.

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The lasting impression is the thing that keeps one attracted. Art, either a physical object or an intangible idea, is a stamp in the mental facet of our bodies. Through concepts, expressions, statements, ect.; the relationship created, unlike any other, between an individual and multiple mediums can only be experienced through being in the presence of artwork. With this power it is everlastingly placed in the mind and subconsciously effecting other aspects of ones life.

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I consider myself an artist because I can create art that I am confident in and others appreciate too. Having this feeling makes me feel like I belong, like I made it as an artist. I love to make all kinds of art and find myself thinking about how I can turn anything I see into a piece of art that I could call my own. I create work that is both representational and abstract. By using bright, vivid colors I can invoke life and "fun" into my work.

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I am a writer, a poet, and a photographer. I make art because I love metaphors, word play, minor histories, telling stories, and eliciting smirks. Growing up as a middle class woman in pseudo-rural Alabama plays a large role in my work, as well as my undergraduate studies in English literature.

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i am an artist because it allows me to take the world i am a part of, put my own twist on it, and then create work that expresses my perceptions, feelings, emotions, frustrations, joys, etc.. and as i create, all those things going on inside my head are thrown out there into the world for others to connect with. whether they admire the work or feel the need to be critical of it is really secondary to that connection that art allows us to have with both the art itself, and the person who's inspired enough to create the work. art allows you to take what you have inside, that people might not know or understand about you, share it with the world and ultimately shape and influence your surroundings in whatever way you desire.

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I remember losing track of time as I looked across the cracking surface. The cracks were showing the layers underneath of what had come before. I hadn’t even seen one of my paintings that intensely yet. I walked up and stuck my nose into each brush stroke then stumbled back to look at the painting as a whole. I spent time looking at the calming ochre background with white stripes cutting vertically through the composition. I saw the stripes and their relationship to the gray bow like shape. The gray moved into the picture from behind the first stripe then in front of the next stripe. Looking through the gray arching bow there is a leaning black shape that is a spectator viewing everything from behind the scenes. I have gotten lost in Robert Motherwell’s “Wall Painting with Stripes” many times. Every time I think about how good it is to be with a painting for a period of time, looking back at its history, seeing how it looks different as I grow older, and each time searching for something I haven’t seen before.

I have always enjoyed the act of searching. I first realized the enjoyment while searching for comic books long before looking at paintings. The act of going through comics that are stacked into boxes would lead to the discovery of the perfect piece to add to my collection. My fingers and eyes would swiftly work through every box so as not to miss a hidden gem that I wasn’t even looking for. When I found something, I would examine every detail. These searches soon continued with music, books and all things of interest. I was always searching for that next part of my collection. Whenever I would stumble onto something new it would take over until it was all I collected. These in turn became different searches, each with a new discovery, which would lead to new searches.

This practice finds its way into my painting and drawing still today. While painting and drawing I’m often searching for new interests that lead me in different directions. After I find something of interest, I examine it in a serial manner. Whether it is working in black and white or working with different motifs, I often find ideas while searching for something else. I look intensely at shapes I’m collecting, stacking them closely from front to back. The shapes fight for position in front, trying not to be the ground. I have recently found myself looking at the most basic of shapes like the circle, square and triangle. I connect the shapes with lines and rectangles moving through the painting. The squares are cut into L’s that are reassembled, like pieces from Tetris. These shapes can change color, direction, opacity and size as they are put into place. My collections of shapes and interests will continue to change as I search for the next hidden gem.

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My art is a creative abstraction of life. I don't consider art on demand (pieces created on commission, for assignments, at request of others in any way) to be an accurate representation of my work. Pieces are not created with the goal to please anyone, including myself. They are merely a necessary exhalation of a moment's inspiration.

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Making art, for me, is a way to further explore how we see. My sources are everyday visual experiences of architecture and landscape but I am most interested in perceptions of space and not the actuality of it. History, imagination, even social anxieties can be projected onto a location. I hope to excavate these qualities of spaces and to interpret them as images that are a compression of time. I also want them to be understood as places where multiple histories and perspectives overlap.

I am a painter mostly and I am very invested in what it means to paint at a time when representation seems more real than reality. However, I reject the idea that painting has become symbolic of expression rather than expression in and of itself. I attempt to reveal my paintings as both object and image. This, I believe, opens up the possibilites for imagery while maintaining some self awareness.

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"Art is a legalized form of insanity, and I do it very well."

Stanley Marsh

Art is a word that makes most people tune out and it's almost always better not to use it. I guess that this is due to various cultural forces acting to separate people based on illusory class boundaries, but for better or worse, art has become a symbol of the schism between haves and have nots. Thankfully, meaningful and engaging art is returning to the public sphere, freeing itself from galleries requiring a master's degree or higher to put any context to their contents. I'm interested in creating work that contains levels of content, in public/visible space, while allowing an aesthetic entry point to those who may feel excluded by the many onanistic works of conceptual art of the recent decades.

Art is an act of peace, a representation of a society in balance that is committed to increasing the health and welfare of the global organism. I want to engage in this peaceful warfare as a way to assert the value of the culture we have spent so much time, energy and life to build. It is a testament to those passed who labored on behalf of future generations, allowing us to live in a better world.

With all that dramatic hyperbole out of the way, the real reason I do this is because it's better than having a job. It is a way to combine a variety of interesting areas of thought together. It allows the opportunity to remain curious about the world and avoid the routine that plagues modern man. Everyone's life clock is ticking fast, and I have never seen the point in doing anything under such rigid time constraints that isn't meaningful.

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I am a translator of scientific thought and theory into various areas of the digital art medium. I draw my inspiration from theoretical math and physics, astronomy, as well as modern computer electronics. The overarching goal of my work is to have my audience value these heavily conceptual scientific ideas by bridging the gap between scientific theory and artistic expression. My hope is to invoke new and unique ways of visualizing and thinking about technological frontiers, as well as inspire my audience to do the same, whether it’s being introduced to them for the first time, or presented in a new and distinctive way.

My work encompasses 3D computer models/animations as well as 2D animations and conceptual illustrations related to everything from cosmology on macroscopic scales, to string theory on microscopic scales. It’s also very important for me to tie together all the loose ends in a way that allows my audience to appreciate these concepts as I do. I hope to bring visually compelling and thought provoking pieces that shed an open light onto the forefront of theoretical science.

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I am interested in this, that and everything in between. I wonder why that guy is wearing two different socks? Who kicked over that port-o-potty? Was there someone in it? Why did they use two different types of pavement to build that new road? I always want to understand more about the decisions people make in this world which in turn affect everyone in one way or another.

My day job is a photojournalist, so my instincts as a photographer is to document the daily life of people. It is hard to push away from that at times. In my art photographs I try my best to break away from my standards of a photojournalist by at the very least looking for something that is not normally covered for a newspaper. Many of my art projects are still a documentation of daily life (like photojournalism), but I tend to focus in on the small topics of life that go without notice.

I am in the middle of documenting tip jars and the personalization of them. Some places have simple jars, while others have large tubs with cute or dumb sayings on them to entice the customer to toss in their spare change. Another project is the documentation of what is very close to most people but goes unseen: underground tunnels, area's above ceiling tiles, etc.

Artists Statements seem to be hand in hand with art in general. Always changing, always staying the same. I could look back on this artist statement in 10, 5, 2 years and be somewhere else completely in my mindset as an artists, but to me, that is such a big part of art. Some artists can go about doing the same style and be successful for a lifetime, while other artists always have to adapt and re-think themselves to propel their creativity. I don't know which mentality I will follow, but I doubt many other artists know either.

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Not many people can say they have lived on a floating city in the middle of an ocean. Well, I have, and one of the only things that kept my mind sane was taking time out and entertaining myself with television, movies and videos. I think of video art as a morale booster; something that others can use to take their minds off the things that worry them. As an artist, I want to continue to use art as a morale booster for myself and others. I want to tell stories that entertain, inform and please others. I will do what I love and love what I do for the rest of my life.

A Statement

As an artist I find my self most interested in analyzing the world and object around me. I use properties or qualities of things in my life to imagine things that are not a part of our world as of now and I formulate a plan to create them. I want my work to give the audience something they have never experienced before that may open there minds to new possibilities in there own lives that they may have overlooked. I hope that my art can take people back the there innocent days when everything your eyes rest on would be new and interesting.