I first started fooling around with computers in 1985 while doing my undergraduate work at what was then the Academy of Art College. I decided to approach it as a sophisticated etch-a-sketch and a fun art tool so I wouldn't be intimidated and it worked. Since then I've worked using all sorts of programs and am particularly partial to Photoshop. Below are some of the many images I've created over the years.
I was interested in looking at Western taste both culturally and literally. Western food tastes include strong sensations of fats, salts, and sugars. Western aesthetic tastes include icons such as Mona Lisa, Marilyn Monroe, and Madonna Ciccione. Using a high-powered microscope I took photographs of olive oil, salt, and sugar and combined them in Photoshop with these icons of female desirability. Mona Lisa appears in olive oil because she was painted in oils during a time when oil was a major commodity in Italy. Marilyn Monroe appears in sugar crystals because of her sweetness and because she played a character called Sugar in the "Misfits," and Madonna of course is known for being a very salty gal.
Snapshot of my Mills College MFA thesis exhibition "Bible Studies" indicating the Ten Plagues of Exodus wallpaper created in Illustrator and then hand silkscreened on the right, seven needlepoint canvases of the seven deadly sins (see below), and an animation movie exploring Judeo/Christian iconography and cultural confusion. Click here for my thesis statement.
The short animation that I made (which you can see in the central TV) will be coming soon : ) I even sing the text in it. Talk about walking through fear.
The ten plagues of Exodus are from the Jewish Passover where God visited a series of plagues on the Egyptians to convince Pharoah to release the Jews from slavery. The plagues consist of water turns to blood, murain or cattle death, plagues of frogs, flies, gnats, locusts, boils, hail, darkness descends, and the horrible death of the Egyptian's first child. Ultimately, Pharoah relented, but at what a cost. These images were created as part of my MFA show. I drew them in Illustrator and then made 18 feet by 8 feet hand silkscreened wallpaper from them.
This began as a Photoshop exercise exploring personal dualities. It became more of meditation on aging, gender, and identity. Since creating this image, I've become quite a bit older and my body and mind continue to age in unexpected ways - some wonderful, others not so much. I think because my parents died young, I never had any role models for aging. Now I have an exquisitely vital 86 year old mom-in-law and I bring art programs into senior living facilities where I get to experience much love and tenderness. Life is such n fascinating journey.