Wally Gilbert, Trees, blue digital print on aluminum, 60 x 40 in.
“Every generation invents a new artistic technique or medium to create new ways to express the concepts, thoughts, and feelings of the age. Just as the painter’s brush is an extension of their hand, so the computer is the extension of the creative mind.”
Gloria King Merritt, Curator/Artist
In this exhibition, three experienced digital new media fine artists use a variety of techniques to interact with technology in their creative process.
Each of these artists have substantial resumes and have experience in other fields and traditional techniques, and yet, have chosen to focus on cutting edge processes that have only become possible with the birth of the new millennium.
Depending on the artist, “born digital” fine art may be presented on canvas, paper, metal, resin, video, projection, or any other way that can be imagined. Each unique artwork in this exhibition is either on metal or canvas, allowing it to be installed easily within a contemplative space.
Wally Gilbert at Galatea Fine Art photo © David Lee Black
Walter (Wally) Gilbert
Digital artist Wally Gilbert had a full career as a Molecular Biologist. Awarded a Nobel Prize in 1980 for discovering a rapid DNA sequencing method, he also co-founded Myriad Genetics and Biogen. Walter Gilbert is a Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. Since the early 2000’s, he has been creating visual art, amplifying the information in digital photographs using computers, enhancing and transforming the lines and colors into a new and vibrant art form.
“Years ago, I discovered that I could make large prints from images taken with a small digital camera and that these prints carried an emotional and aesthetic impact. It was then that I began making digital images as art. “
Works in this exhibition are printed directly onto the surface of aluminum with a high gloss laminate that enhances the intensity of the colors.
Wally’s artwork has been exhibited internationally. He works from studios in Somerville MA.
Gloria King Merritt at Galatea Fine Art photo © David Lee Black
Gloria King Merritt
Every generation invents a new artistic technique or medium to create new ways to express the concepts, thoughts and feeling of the age. Art is, and always will be, an idea, not a medium. Just as the painter’s brush is an extension of their hand, so the computer is the extension of the creative mind.
Gloria was trained in a variety of traditional fine art techniques and media, though a series of apprenticeships, including drawing, painting, metal, resin, color theory, and film. Her teachers encouraged a sound classical education, as well as experimentation beyond the boundaries of tradition.
In 1976 she was introduced to digital art through her teacher, Nathaniel Jacobson, a Yale educated Color Theorist and research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab. In 1980 she worked in video as Art Director at the CBS affiliate broadcast television station in Boston. By 1985, she was working professionally with cutting-edge art involving technology. By 2011 she was working exclusively as a digital and new media artist, embracing technology that compliments and enhances the creative process, and blurs the edge between traditional media.
Digital painting is painting with light, on a back-lit screen, forming layers of varying transparency, and creating a virtual three-dimensional image. When the layers are merged, and the image is complete, it is translated to a final substrate, such as resin, metal, canvas or paper, using archival pigments suspended in a medium. This allows the digital painting to be viewed within a contemplative personal space or gallery.
Although technically complex, the results appear effortless, unique, and often surprising.
Dorothy Amore Pilla at Galatea Fine Art photo © David Lee Black
Dorothy Amore Pilla
Dorothy Pilla was influenced by her experience as a print maker, painter and creator of non-traditional quilts, reflected in the layering and multiple imagery in her digital art on metal. The medium allows for a plasticity of the images central to her work.
“My work, printed on aluminum, represents not what was actually seen, but rather impressions of what I saw. My images speak to energies that power nature and the endurance of living things. Each image starts with a simple “snapshot”, a moment in time encountered and captured. Photography is the medium that brings to life imaginings that are fueled by encounters I have with commonplace things. I go beyond representation of what actually was and visually speculate what could be. And so I deconstruct and transform reality from mundane representation to complex images that embody the essence of the subject.”
Dorothy was previously the Director of the Art Education Program for Tufts University and the The School of the Museum of Fine Arts which is affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She was also the curriculum consultant for Massachusetts Department of Education, serving as the Chair for the Integrated Curriculum Development Committee responsible for the development of the Boston Arts Academy.
She resides with her husband in the coastal town of Duxbury, MA where they own and operate Night and Day Studio.
Born Digital – The Artist as Innovator: May 30-July1, 2018. Visit Galatea Fine Art at 460 Harrison Avenue, #B-6, Boston, MA 02118, 617-542-1500. Gallery Hours Wednesday-Sunday 12-5pm and by appointment.
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