Artist Statement
Wally Gilbert: Artist's Statement
I began making digital images as art when I discovered that I could make large prints from images taken with a small digital camera and that these prints carried an emotional and asthetic impact. My earliest work was of fragments of the visual world, either portions of natural scenes or of man’s architectural or industrial artifacts. My first one-person show included a 48” x 72” image made from a two mega-pixel camera.
I was invited to Poland, to do an installation at the Norblin Site in Warsaw, by Jan Kubasiewicz and Josef Piwkowski. These photographs of decaying machinery were installed in Warsaw in the Summer of 2007 as twenty-six 12’ x 8’ hangings and thirty 36” x 24” prints, face-mounted on plexiglas. This show was exhibited again in Lodz and in Poznan.
After photographing dancers in the ballet, I went on to explore abstractions, first in a “Vanishing” series, that was based on a natural form, the outline of a human head. The many patterns produced in that series all shared some aspect of a biological or natural curve, which still was manifest even in the smallest cropping of those images.
In my later work the basic element is a straight, shaded line, which I used to create geometric patterns. The “Geometric Series” explored patterns in color or black-and-white created from overlapping squares or triangles or just from lines, taken either simply or in intersecting groups. My most recent work lies in two directions: one of pure abstractions based on overlapping forms the other of photographs moved to extreme values in color space or into black and white. I have also begun to explore projected videos, made using programs that allow one to overlap video streams.
I make many images by hand on the computer. The computer simply holds the intermediate forms as I superpose the many layers I create to build up the image. The images begin in black and white, and then I color them in the computer. I generate these colors either by accessing the colors available or, in a more complicated fashion, by using the ability to change the global input-output functions for each color and intensity separately. When the layers containing the colored images interact with each other, still more color patterns appear. The computer is a digital workspace, driven by my hand and eye.
These images exemplify my delight in color and form, and my search for a three-dimensional effect on a two-dimensional surface. I search for depth beyond the picture plane and for mystery.
Catalogs from many of my shows are available on amazon.com as is the book
"Behind the Scenes at Boston Ballet."
I began making digital images as art when I discovered that I could make large prints from images taken with a small digital camera and that these prints carried an emotional and asthetic impact. My earliest work was of fragments of the visual world, either portions of natural scenes or of man’s architectural or industrial artifacts. My first one-person show included a 48” x 72” image made from a two mega-pixel camera.
I was invited to Poland, to do an installation at the Norblin Site in Warsaw, by Jan Kubasiewicz and Josef Piwkowski. These photographs of decaying machinery were installed in Warsaw in the Summer of 2007 as twenty-six 12’ x 8’ hangings and thirty 36” x 24” prints, face-mounted on plexiglas. This show was exhibited again in Lodz and in Poznan.
After photographing dancers in the ballet, I went on to explore abstractions, first in a “Vanishing” series, that was based on a natural form, the outline of a human head. The many patterns produced in that series all shared some aspect of a biological or natural curve, which still was manifest even in the smallest cropping of those images.
In my later work the basic element is a straight, shaded line, which I used to create geometric patterns. The “Geometric Series” explored patterns in color or black-and-white created from overlapping squares or triangles or just from lines, taken either simply or in intersecting groups. My most recent work lies in two directions: one of pure abstractions based on overlapping forms the other of photographs moved to extreme values in color space or into black and white. I have also begun to explore projected videos, made using programs that allow one to overlap video streams.
I make many images by hand on the computer. The computer simply holds the intermediate forms as I superpose the many layers I create to build up the image. The images begin in black and white, and then I color them in the computer. I generate these colors either by accessing the colors available or, in a more complicated fashion, by using the ability to change the global input-output functions for each color and intensity separately. When the layers containing the colored images interact with each other, still more color patterns appear. The computer is a digital workspace, driven by my hand and eye.
These images exemplify my delight in color and form, and my search for a three-dimensional effect on a two-dimensional surface. I search for depth beyond the picture plane and for mystery.
Catalogs from many of my shows are available on amazon.com as is the book
"Behind the Scenes at Boston Ballet."