Cedric Philippe,
Saint Claude/Jura, France
Flickr (Nut39)
cedricphilippe@yahoo.com
..
Matthew Watkins
Bari, Italy (Born in Manchester England, raised in Toronto, Canada, now living and working in Southern Italy
Flickr (Matthew Watkins)
website/blog: http://www.watkinsmedia.com/
James O'Shea
Daly City, CA, USA
Flickr: (Jonbronx)
Jfoshea03@gmail.com
Artist Statement:
I am a student at Cogswell Polytechnical College in Sunnyvale, CA studying Entertainment Design. My goal with painting with my iPod Touch is to mimic actual plein-air painting without all the mess, on the fly. As well as to train my eye the best I can to see color better and translate what I've learned to my production paintings for projects. I can't wait of what is to come next with this technology
John Bavaro
Erie, Pennsylvania, USA
Flickr (bavaroland)
bavaroland@yahoo.com
website/blog: www.johnbavaro.com
John Halliday
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Susan Murtaugh
Wisconsin, USA
Flickr (Suzi54241)
Murtaugh-wi@tm.net
website:blog: http://thefingerpainters.com/
Julian Wigley
Melbourne, Australia,Flickr (Julian Wigley)
julianwigley@yahoo.com
website: http://www.wigley.com.au/
James Schaffer
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Flickr(jschafa)
jschafa@gmail.com
website/blog: http://www.jamesschaffer.blogspot.com/
Benjamin Rabe,
Hamburg, Germany
Flickr (Benjamin Rabe)
Benjamin@nonuts.de
Benjamin.rabe@hotmail.com
website: http://nonuts.de
The ten artists represented here are just few of literally thousand of artists whose work
has been transformed by iphone applications such as the popular $4.99 app called Brushes
(created by developer Steve Sprang), and other drawing/painting/3-D programs available for simple, instantaneous
downloading. They are an eclectic mix of artists, with some already well established in their art careers,and others just emerging as students, etc. The commonality between them all, however, is a sort of egalitarianism of a "new-century medium" with artists bound together by a functional device (the iphone/ipod), that is beginning to transform the way we make and see art.
I was “introduced” to part of this community almost instantly and accidentally by sharing my own work in online gallery forums on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter sites. I found the instantaneous nature of both the exhibition and feedback to be as unprecedented as the medium itself. For the uninitiated, there is a global network of artists now working on a 3.5-inch screen and producing some rather incredible and complicated art using only their index finger.
As for the process, despite the size, the act of drawing with the finger is surprisingly economical, and with practice, one becomes very accurate. The iphone, along with all of its other capabilities, is also now a new type of pocket-sized sketchbook. It’s a device that fosters an intimacy in the interaction between the user and the machine in a way that styluses, keyboards and mice cannot.
In our amazing age where even three-year olds fully expect to be able to speak to, push on, swipe at, or touch a machine, and to have it do their bidding, in crude terms, we’ve come to expect reciprocity, and engineers are doing their best to provide it. Perhaps iphone, and ipod art reflects an ephemeral caprice of the nascent millennium-one that will go the way of so many fads. But I suspect that it is actually closer to the futuristic predictions of the merging of “man” and “machine.” In short, we’re probably just beginning to touch the surface of its possibilities.
Guest Curator John Bavaro is an Associate Professor of Art (Painting and Drawing) at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania where he is also the director of the Bruce Gallery. His work with the iphone is an extension of his “GENUS” series-a collection of 100 oil paintings of primates (both human and non-human).
For more information, contact bavaroland@yahoo.com
Artist Statement:
Most of my work is about time, or maybe the lack thereof. I try to create a vacuum where some indistinct distant past and future
can comfortably collide. Influences and interests include 15th-17th century Dutch painting,symbolism, medicine,programmable electronics, mythology, early Puritan America, space and the future.
Artist Statement:
For me, iphone fingerpainting has been a quantum leap in my ability to freely express my ideas.
It allows me to create in any moment of the day. It gives me constant access to a million colours, and the freedom to change them in a heartbeat. It's been a while since i had this much fun painting. And to think I hated phones.
Artist Statement:
I'm French, 17 years old, and have been practicing fingerpainting since about one year. My work is mostly inspired by Goro fujita's digital art, and I keep learning from iMasters like Susan Murtaugh, Matthew Watkins, Benjamin Rabe.
Flickr (John.T)
J5halliday@hotmail.com
website/blog: http://www.johnhalliday.com/site03/work/index.htm
Artist Statement:
As the recession batters the ad business and I watch concept after concept downsized, bought out or just plain fired, I turn to my iPhone apps. Like a gut-full of good bacteria, they clean out the remnants of old painting, drawing and sculpture that still clog my system. They cleanse my palette and present me with a million new ways to bend, twist, flay and mutate light, colour and texture. My latest work, Voxel Shores, owes its genesis to the constant catastrophes and rebirths of the 4-billion-year-old tumbling ball we call earth. It’s a mash-up and round-up of all my styles and visual passions held together by some mysterious gravity I have no way of understanding.
Artist Statement:
I have long been a “chronicler” of nature, and have done hundreds of largely unsentimental, direct oil paintings and drawings of fish, birds and primates. In my most recent series, the “GENUS” series, I attempt to place non-human primates in the same art historical situations as traditional human sitters. I establish a “direct relationship” with these animals at zoos, often observing them, photographing them and sketching them for hours. At times, in this process, I can imagine that I recognize something like cognizance or human-like intelligence in their gazing eyes, and I recognize that long-broken ancestral link.
My work, now portrayed in these iphone sketches, relies on tropes established by Dutch and Spanish masters of portraiture. I try to find that moment in the look of a primate where this connection has been made, and hopefully, if successful, let the viewer surmise whether there indeed is some sort flicker of humanness, or whether it’s purely an anthropomorphic projection on our part.
Artist Statement:
Pictures have always been in my head. My earliest memories are of attempts at expressing them. I suppose my first medium was crayon, but I’d use anything at hand—pencils, ball point pens; on any surface or material. Then early in 2009 I discovered the iPod touch and painting on it. It has been a year of great artistic growth, I think of myself as an illustrator of all that surrounds me. landscapes, cities, and the people and things that inhabit them. I love the challenge and delight in sharing them with others.
Artist Statement:
My work develops upon the ideas of modern life, overload of technology, relationships and interactions. I have been exploring formal issues along with conceptual elements. The ideas come from how people communicate with one another, with the prominence of technology and networking. Communication and relationships have been forever changed with the recurring use of phones, computers and messages. Many of these tools claim to enhance people’s interactions with others, however connections have been reduced to short responses. People experience these situations and are constantly being hit with images, words, sounds, advertisements, events, updates and tickers
Artist Statement:
Even though it's key, to me it's not the mobility of fingerpainting alone that kicked in: it's the way creation and reception contracts and thus shortens my learning cycle to a degree that I've never experienced before. It's like I'm speeding through art-land with no police on my heels.
Digits to Digital: An exhibition of iphone and ipod finger art
John Bavaro: Guest Curator
This is an exhibition published in
The Incliner-The Journal of the Arts of the Art Academy of Cincinnati
to see the full exhibition, link to www.incliner.org
Kara Jansson Kovacev,
New York, New York, USA
Kara Kovacev
Flickr(Cloudbuilder)
kara@cloudbuilder.com
website:blog: http://www.cloudbuilder.com/
