High- and Low-Tech Artworks are Eerily Similar
Oct. 22, 2018 — Artists Paul Lindale and Tekla McInerney approach their work from radically different starting points. He writes computer algorithms that generate images. She does everything possible by hand. Yet their wildly disparate processes yield remarkably kindred artistic results.
Convergence, a joint show of new work by Lindale and McInerney, will be on display in the Gallery at the Rhodes Arts Center Nov. 2–Dec. 2, with an opening reception at 6:30 pm on Nov. 2. Lindale is art department chair at Greenfield Community College. McInerney is a graphic designer at NMH and member of the Zea Mays Printmaking group.
Can you tell which image was built with paper, hand, and ink, and which coded on a computer?
Top: Lindale's digital print Tempest; Below: McInerney's hand-pulled monotype from the Epoch series
When Paul's wife Sharon Lindale, NMH director of communications, saw Tekla's art, she was struck by the remarkable similarities, and introduced the two artists. This exhibition grew out of their mutual fascination with one other's working methods.
McInerney is a third-generation Connecticut Valley native whose family's history in the area resonates in her art. "My family came here because the Connecticut River was here, and the river meant work: in the mills of Holyoke and on the farms of Hadley," she says. "I have to look closely to see the remnants of that work, but the water—liquid, solid, gas—is very present and is always moving. The river I live with, the coast of New England, and the ice of Antarctica influence my work. But it is time, more than place, that I experience and capture. It is the constantly changing qualities of water—still, frozen, stormy—I will never tire of."
Her prints are worked spontaneously, and McInerney often uses her hands to remove ink from the plate. Each of the resulting hand-pulled monotypes is unique.
Lindale's computer screen is his canvas. He writes computer code to loosely embody the type of imagery he envisions, though the resulting images often surpass his expectations. Although some works are eventually printed on paper, others exist solely as visual projections. These display animated landscapes that evolve in subtle and often unpredictable ways over the course of seconds, minutes, or hours and yet somehow maintain their original essence.
The NMH show includes works that, he says, "examine the impact of the atomic age on the environment and mankind." Landscapes in his Uranium and Plutonium series are based on the structure and physical properties of those elements, and evoke viewing the world through a circular lens. "Looking through a microscope helps us understand the underlying structure of the world by seeing things we would not normally be able to see," he says. "Looking through a telescope brings us closer while we are yet remote, keeping the world at a safe distance."
The Gallery at the Rhodes Arts Center is open Monday–Friday, 10 am–7 pm, and 1–5 pm on weekends.