Anne Spalter at the Big Screen Plaza

Posted by isabelwd / July 6th, 2011 / No responses

As part of LISA’s partnership with the Big Screen Plaza, we will be showing excerpts from one of Anne Spalter’s works during the month of July on the Big Screen at the Eventi Hotel at 30th and 6th in Manhattan.  We are excited that Anne is working with us for this project.

Bio

Anne Morgan Spalter is an acclaimed writer, artist and educator whose career reflects her long-standing goal of integrating art and technology. She creates art works that explore the concept of the “modern landscape” through both the subject matter and the digital processes used to create the work.

Her book, The Computer in the Visual Arts (Addison Wesley 1999), has become a standard reference text used at over a hundred universities throughout the world. Roger Mandle, former RISD President, described Spalter’s book as, “a seductively articulate and illuminating introduction to the rapidly expanding world of the computer and art, design, and animation… Her book will become an essential textbook for art school curricula as well as a standard source for media-wise artists.” Spalter also created and taught the first fine art digital media courses at both the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Brown University. She was an undergrad at Brown, majoring in Mathematics and a graduate student at RISD, from which she has an MFA in Painting.

As a hybrid traditional/digital artist, Spalter’s work is included in leading contemporary collections in the US, Europe and the Middle East as well as in museums such as the Albright-Knox (Buffalo, NY) and the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK).

She and her husband have established the largest collection of early computer art in the US. Works from the Anne and Michael Spalter Collection have been displayed throughout the world and were on view at the MoMA in the show “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.” In early 2011, the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA  exhibited works curated from the collection. Spalter also is a martial artist with a black belt in Kenpo Karate.

She is represented by the Stephan Stoyanov/Luxe Gallery in New York City, Catherine Rubin in Paris, and Candita Clayton in RI.  Anne is showing more digital video drawings, as well as some still works, in “Places”, a group show at the Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, opening July 7 2001 (6-9pm) and up until August 12.

Artist’s Statement: Spalter’s Modern Digital Landscapes

Anne Morgan Spalter creates art works that explore her concept of the “modern landscape.” The works depict modern landscape elements or ways of viewing our surroundings and use traditional materials as well as digital imaging, printing, and video.

Spalter identifies objects and scenes that are objectively compelling and also speak to her own internal emotions. She uses digital photographs as inspirations for (often large-scale) charcoal, pastel and graphite drawings. The hands-on traditional mark–making experience lets her explore the images and related ideas in a visceral and physical way impossible on the computer.

When the drawings are completed, Spalter returns to the digital realm, capturing the drawings as a high-resolution file and using a wide variety of software to further refine the work. With the computer she can apply image processing algorithms, edit compositions and create video.  Some the works remain representational and others are recreated as computationally composed abstractions.

The hands-on traditional mark–making experience lets her explore the images and related ideas in a visceral and physical way impossible on the computer.  The computer, in turn, lets her explore visual strategies impossible in the traditional, analog world.

Description of Works:

In the Internal Energies series, I wanted to further convey the sense of swirling internal energy in my hand-drawn graphite cloud drawings by introducing motion. I also wanted to contrast the traditional feeling of the original drawings with the high-tech computational mark-making of the computer.

To this end, I worked on letting the internal energy of the cloud further manifest itself through roiling motion inside the cloud. To me, each work represents both an external, observed and recorded landscape as well as an internal, emotional one. The piece roils and churns and then begins to deform and finally sucks into itself and disappears.

In some of the pieces, Wonder Woman’s Invisible plane flies through the cloud, deforming along with the drawing, and finally flying free of the turbulent cloud. I love Wonder Woman as a female role model, with her super strength and agility and proficiency in hand-to-hand combat. (The latter particularly appeals to me as I now have a black belt in karate.) There is an enduring obsession with planes in my work and I have always been intrigued by her invisible plane and the challenge of depicting it. In these digital video drawings, Wonder Woman’s invisible plane is affected by the visual and emotional state of the cloud but persists and finally flies free.

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July’s Leaders in Software and Art choices (a 60-min. loop), including works by Anne Spalter, Mark Stock, Kenji Williams, Eva Lee, and Asya Reznikov, will show on the Big Screen at the following times (schedule subject to change.  Please check schedule at http://bigscreenplaza.com before attending).