ArtStyle will be presenting a weekly art series throughout the summer on the participating Cool Globe Exhibit artists. In this second series, we feature: Joe Compean’s One Earth; Deirdre A. Fox’s Tapping Geothermal Resources; Alessandra Kelley’s Spiral Chance; and Nancy L. Steinmeyer’s First We Scream, Then We Act. All images are provided courtesy of the artists unless otherwise noted.

Joe Compean

Peep Hole View

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Technorati Tags: Cool Globe Exhibit

I first wrote about M. M. Robinson for UR Chicago Magazine (April 12 – May 19, 2007) in an article entitled (theirs, not mine) Technicolor Fantasy, M. M. Robinson’s Creations Take Imagination to a New Level. In it, I describe Robinson’s multimedia installation Synthesizer as re-defining “techno art in Chicago with graphic design intermixed with personal-reality symbolism.” As a follow-up, I asked him about Synthesizer and his new direction in art as the new director for NAB Gallery, one of the oldest artist-owned galleries in Chicago.

Chimera IV. Inkjet on Vinyl. Courtesy of the artist.

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Technorati Tags: multimedia installation, graphic design, artist-owned galleries, Chicago

Steven Husby, designer and painter, uses Photoshop in his design process and then paints hard-edged images using acrylic on panel, creating abstract compositional permutations with a 3-D sensibility by applying gradations of color. The resulting “new media” optical art is both playful and visually appealing.

ArtStyle: How do you create your compositions?

Steven Husby (SH): I compose most of my work beforehand on the computer using Photoshop, starting with simple gradations of 4 to 12 colors. I stretch, distort, copy and paste the initial gradient into simple patterns that make up the virtual first stage of the work. Sometimes I make paintings from these initial solutions. But more often than not I keep going — cutting and pasting biomorphic fragments of the initial pattern back onto itself. No matter how complicated and obscure the work gets, it’s always held together by the initial pattern. From a practical standpoint, the key to my drawing process is trial and error and working in layers.

Courtesy of the artist

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