Click on the toggle button above for full screen slideshow
From an Ancient Craft to High Technology
From stained glass diagrams of undersea life to underground metro maps, a dramatic technical leap in my work occurred when, in the mid-1980s, my father bought the first CAD (computer assist design) system on the market, which he used to revolutionize architectural interior restaurant kitchen facilities design. Plotted plans on a computer monitor reminded me of neon colors on a black background, and the first thought that came to mind was that this would be perfect for further exploring the potential of using subway maps by way of employing the new technology as a means of inventing a new ‘light art’ form. With a computer that was intended solely to design and plot architectural plans, I found beauty in the reproduction of graphs, diagrams and linear maps, particularly when working with a multicolored light – emitting surface.
Thus, the next stage of my ongoing project, The Underground Cathedral, commenced with plotting a small series of CAD ink line drawings based on the outline depicting the city of Paris that was graphically drawn on a Paris metro map, which for me reflected the shape of a technologically-drawn brain and thus became the subtitle of my enormous stained glass artwork: “The Large Brain.” This simple graphic form was plotted, along with the only two then existing train lines of the metro system (known as the “RER”) which serves the outlying suburbs. These lines became a metaphor for an economic graph containing economic terminology intermingled with other terms pertaining to the consequences of human choice, such as” Wise Investment,” “Spectacular Bid,” “Venture Capital,” “Initial Risks,” “Early tomatoes,” “Joint Ventures,” “Mergers,” Divestitures,” “Sinking Fund Debentures,” “Mergers,” “Closing Trends,” “Tender Splits” and “Bottom Line.” One of these artworks repeats small images the same motif (minus the terms) twenty-four times, which I entitled, “Small Minds.”
“For my first ever multimedia installation of The Underground Cathedral at the USC Atelier in Santa Monica, in 1986, each drawing was laminated between equally-sized large sheets of transparent glass, held together with a zinc frame, which is commonly used to frame a stained glass window. One of these framed drawings was hung on a wall behind an angular-hung zinc-framed sheet of ribbed glass, which distorted the drawing. Thus I entitled it, “Fractured Mind.”
In 1989, my continued pursuit of creative expression with a technical architectural design computer (CAD) system entailed plotting exact linear reproductions of ten public transportation maps from around the world, all but one of them subway systems. The exception is the map of a surface transportation system of Munich, which I chose because of it’s unusual form based on concentric circles.
From left to right, top to bottom are Moscow, Barcelona, Tokyo, Munich, Mexico City, London, Washington D.C., Stockholm and Paris. The tenth map, below, is the part of the New York subway that covers Manhattan.
Once the ten maps were plotted, I continued to play with them as a group, experimenting with them individually, superimposing one over another or reproducing the same map several times in various ways. Below is one example, of the Paris Metro, reproduced 12 times on a single axis resulting in a mandala-like effect. Reminiscent of Rose Windows of Europe’s great cathedrals, I entitled it: “Paris Rose Mandala.”
Below are further examples of the various experiments conducted with each of the ten plotted maps. Every effect is the result of precise mathematical processes:
After experimenting with the ten maps as seen on a computer monitor, I made a series of ink-plotted drawings on sheets of translucent Mylar. The fascinatingly complicated process of the mechanically intricate ink-plotting machine – which today is a dinosaur – involved a robotic in-and-out movement of the Mylar material on a flatbed. Simultaneously, individual ink pens, each of a distinct color, fitted vertically into holes on a round horizontal disk that moved with very sharp, quick motions on a horizontal track, as the Mylar was perpendicularly pulled back and forth below. In other words, as the Mylar moved forward and back, the pens above it moved left and right, somehow remarkably creating a reproduction of the image on the computer’s monitor. I played with the process by sometimes tugging on the Mylar as it moved to cause intentional “errors” in the plotting process. No two reproductions of the same image were exactly the same; and since today no such plotting mechanism is still in existence, these pieces can never be recreated. As such, each of these drawings were printed in the early days of computer graphics art on a machine not intended for artistic expression:
From around 1989 until ’96 I traveled across Europe, riding inside of metros wherever and whenever I could, capturing with sounds, photos and video clips whatever struck me as material to draw from, often for the sake of purposes which only became clear to me later. No longer in a position to continue producing delicate stained glass artworks, which required having a studio with large worktables and many supplies at my fingertips, nor my father’s CAD system at my disposal, a camera and a very different type of computer became indispensable for the sake of continuing with a concept and a subject, which over time grew in unanticipated directions and dimensions.
The next major creative breakthrough occurred when I met a young man in Barcelona who worked for one of the first computerized TV production studios in Europe, known as Animatica. Whereas the studio was lined with enormous floor-to-ceiling reel-to-reel computer systems, unknown by their clients, most of their production was on a new commercially available multimedia desktop computer made by Commodore Amiga. I subsequently returned to Los Angeles, purchased the newest model, Amiga 3000, and shipped it back to Barcelona.
The new Amiga computer became my salvation for the continuation of my creative expression.
It was an incredible piece of technology, then more advanced than either the PC or Mac for multimedia work. However, it held a tiny fraction of hard drive space and working memory that is common of computers today. An incredibly intuitive machine, one could tinker with and tweak its software programs. Before diving into digital music recording and video editing, I began by exploring its paint program, which enabled me to transform photos I had been taking during underground journeys into what appeared to be paintings and other creative manipulations of images I had captured with a camera.
Necessity being the mother of invention, my Amiga 3000 had liberated me to become a pioneering digital nomad, before digital nomads were a thing.
However, Commodore Amiga slowly collapsed as a business, making obtaining professional service and advice nearly impossible. Nevertheless, as the internet was just then a new vehicle of communication online Amiga groups emerged and I found most of the technical support and advice I so badly needed. As the “Amiga Underground” was born, I flew from Barcelona to Berlin and later from Poland to Budapest to obtain vital support from passionate Amiga users.
Finally, it became too difficult to continue once the parent company had failed at which time I embarked on a long detour in life, while living abroad and relying on a PC, until returning home in 2012, when I purchased a Mac computer, as once again new doors in a long evolutionary process opened, which I have been exploring ever since, in the continuing development of The Underground Cathedral.
Nevertheless, during that period my computer graphic skills continued to grow, while used for another purpose: the arts center, restaurant and wine bar business I established in post-communist Poland. At that time, I focused on creating promotional posters for my own business, which are posted here on this site:
Upon returning home after 25 years abroad, I came across a box of the 5 1/4 inch floppy disks containing the original CAD files. After a long online search, I encountered someone at Boston University, had the necessary technology and generously retrieved the files for me, which became the gateway to a new creative-technological journey with the latest tools available. That process resulted in allowing the Paris Rose Mandala to blossom into previously inconceivable permutations:
As an aesthetic/technological maturation continued, the following are but a few examples of further embellishments on what was conceived with a CAD decades earlier:
This evolutionary process continued by meshing photographs with the digitized maps and further computer graphic effects:
Some of these artworks are further described in detail here:
Whereas the first digital artworks created with a CAD were limited to exploring the mathematical manipulations of simple straight lines, the degree of detail in the later artworks is a remarkable evolution of digital processes. This includes having the ability to create the illusion of textures. When my artworks are seen in person often I’m asked what is the material upon which they are created, for they sometimes appear to be on canvas, granite, burnished metal, fabric, stone, ceramic, brick or concrete surfaces. Many of my latest artworks are framed, yet the frames are also illusions for they are part of an artwork. What I call “faux frames” contain all sorts of details and textural effects, which can only be seen here by demonstrating close up details of such artworks. Among the “faux frames” are details of paintings by relevant famous artists, Frida Kahlo, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian among them. Here are some examples:
