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[ O ] T H E R ..[ B ] L A T H E R [ . . . W H A T ' S . I N . A . N A M E . . . ] I first came across this term in a book called "Reinventing Work" by philosopher Reverend Matthew Fox a couple years ago. He was describing 'the artist within', our own personal connections with the Divine, and our capacity for expressing and directly experiencing that energy in our creative endeavors. Webster's Dictionary, I recently discovered, defines imago as an idealized mental image of another person or the self. I am presuming that dei has something to do with God, and everything to do with creating. In
my own artistic explorations, I have
come to appreciate this aspect of the creative process in
its own right, as an experience that allows me to lose
myself in the moment. I consider those countless hours
spent in front of my computer screen pushing pixels as
meditation in motion, with the wonderful added benefit
that (ideally) I have produced art I can share with
friends, family, and ultimately with the world via the
Web. [ T ] R A N S I T A L I S M A N I A The first concept is Transition. In the fall of 1995, I created my first personally significant image, entitled Transmuxion, a piece symbolizing a transition in my life as I realized my potential as an artist. I was unaware of its significance initially, but the gravity of its presence in my consciousness has tremendously affected my enthusiasm about creating these images. This transition is characterized by a certain "coming-into-my-own" I've experienced since that image has materialized on my screen. I've done a lot of dues-paying over the past few years, and it finally feels like the work is starting to pay off in the form of acknowledgement I am receiving for my efforts. Now I'm trying to avoid the complacency that I have seen overcome harder working people than myself, even as I am also trying to enjoy the fruits of my labor and thanking God for gracing me with the insight to recognize this path. The second concept is the Talisman, a symbology for the archetypal energies emerging in my consciousness as I experience this transition in my life. The idea for the Talisman Project began forming in my mind around the end of 1993, as I sought to define a few basic principles for living my life in terms of who I saw myself becoming. The original idea was to create a series of images that would explore the energies of these principles as a symbology of natural phenomena, or what I now call the Talismen. The result is finally manifesting as the images you will find here in Transitalismania. Since I have had difficulty describing my work to people in terms of traditional media, I have invented my own word to better represent what my images ultimately are to me. Pixelschism seems to fit best so far. What is a "pixelschism"? My images are constructed and displayed as pixels on your computer monitor, thus the pixel part of the term. The schism aspect comes into play during their creation, when my consciousness literally splits to make way for the energies that eventually spill onto the screen in 16 million colors. The creative process, at its height, can accurately be described as lightning streaking through my perceptions, and which loosens their foundations just enough for me to channel the images of my subconscious into binary form. Sometimes it takes days to recover from an afternoon of pixelschismatics. |
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