June 23, 2010 5:19 PM John Hansen The Sedalia Democrat

An artist using a computer to create art is nothing new, yet they are always using it to push boundaries.

At the Daum Museum’s “Virtual Media: Computer-aided Art from the Collection,” visitors can marvel at pieces that were obviously made digitally and others that seem traditional if you don’t know the story behind it.

Included in the Goddard Gallery's “Virtual Media: Computer-aided Art from the Collection,” are, from left, “Jon,” an ink-on-paper by Mike Lyon, and “Line Operations,” a pigment-based ink, oil and silicone on canvas by Fabian Marcaccio. (photo: Sydney Brink / Sedalia Democrat)

“One of the things that makes this show interesting is some pieces you look at it and say, ‘That must’ve been made by a computer,’ but in other cases it would not occur to you,” said Daum director Tom Piche as he gave a visiting reporter a tour on Tuesday. “So artists have incorporated the ability of computers just as they would a pencil, a brush or a crayon. It’s one of many tools they use.”

In the art world, no one uses the terms “computer artist” or “traditional artist,” because those are not distinct categories.

“Several of the works here show that crossover very clearly,” Piche said. “And that’s why I wanted to call this ‘Computer-aided Art’ instead of ‘Computer Art,’ because I don’t think we call things ‘computer art’ anymore. The computer is so integrated into art-making that its just part of what they do.”

The eight pieces in “Virtual Media,” which can be found in the Goddard Gallery, include paintings, drawings, mixed media and even a sculpture. One drawing was made by a computer programmed by a human. One “painting” was created by a human using a computer and then printed with ink onto a canvas.

For the sculpture, the artist used a computer program to extract the colors in old paintings, then used those colors to make a three-dimensional mash-up that gave an impression of those paintings.

Computer-aided art has come a long way in the last 20 years. The oldest of the eight pieces in the Daum exhibit is from 1992.

“The history of computer art, of course, isn’t that long,” Piche said. “But it’s longer than people might think. Pretty much as soon as scientists started working with computers in the late 1950s, they began doodling with computers. And artists began experiments with computers in the 1960s, but it was difficult to do. You had to go someplace that had a computer, first of all. They were large and bulky and awkward contraptions.

“But with the revolution of the personal computer, a lot of artists were keen to develop the potential of computers. Not to experiment so much, but to make it a serious part of what they were doing.”

Piche recalled his first visit to a computer art exhibit in the late 1980s. At that time, “computer art” generally meant architectural drawings, and little else.

“Artists were using it in very flat ways that we would now consider to be kids’ stuff, because it was all so new, and what you could do was still pretty rudimentary,” Piche said.

Today, the computer is the most versatile tool in an artist’s toolbox.

One of the most eye-catching pieces in “Virtual Media” is a 2009 collage by Sedalia native Larry Thomas, who teaches at Johnson County Community College in Kansas. It’s the visual-art equivalent to what James Cameron did for movies with “Avatar.” “Poser’s Decoy” is on a flat canvas, but it looks three-dimensional thanks to a variety of tricks Thomas uses.

“Even though it’s a flat plain and a stretched canvas, you get the sense that we’re looking into something that has depth,” Piche said.

For more details about Thomas’ piece, see the video on the Swoop page.

In addition to “Virtual Media,” Daum visitors can check out “Arboresque” in the upstairs gallery. It’s a selection of two- and three-dimensional works from the permanent collection centered around trees and the natural world.

But, if you need more proof that computers are now a ubiquitous art tool, one of the nature drawings was created in a computer.

If you go
What: “Virtual Media: Computer-aided Art from the Collection” and “Arboresque”
When: Through Sept. 5
Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays
Where: Daum Museum, State Fair Community College, Sedalia
Admission: Free

The emotion in Mike Lyon’s artwork is inspired by old Japanese prints. The shapes are determined by the contours of the faces of his closest friends, friendly strangers, and the outcome hinges on the mechanics of his latest digital tools.

“Figuring it out: Prints and drawings by Mike Lyon” is on display until July 18 at the Beach Museum of Art.

Bill North, senior curator at the museum, said though Lyon has always had an artist’s touch and studied art in college, he got his start when he went to work in Kansas City, Mo., for his family’s cattle hide processing business in 1976. While working there, Lyon invented a computerized system that made it faster and easier for the workers grading cattle hides. His idea was wildly successful, and Lyon was able to sell his new machine and go to work as an artist full time.

This type of automation and machinery play a large role in Lyon’s work, along with a taste for Japanese print work, North said. Lyon has a collection of nearly 2,000 Japanese prints.

“One thing that really attracted me to his work is that few artists are using digital technology in a responsible and judicious way,” North said. “This marriage of Western and Eastern traditions and ways is so fascinating.”

At the entrance to Lyon’s gallery at the Beach Museum, five oversized faces stare out, full of ambiguous emotion, each wrinkle and hair clearly defined in a maze of ink squiggles and geometric shapes.

Lyon said he starts his process by having the model for each piece come in to his Kansas City studio, where he takes hundreds of photos of their face. He then spends several weeks painstakingly selecting the perfect photo to turn into a print piece.

“Most people don’t look like art,” he said. “But the right image — I know it when I see it, it’s just the aesthetics, I can’t explain it.”

He then programs a machine called the ShopBot with data converted from the digital photographic files to trace the image with a simple ink pen. The files tell the machine how far to move the pen along X, Y and Z axes for each bit of the piece. Lyon said this process is long and tedious and requires him to watch the machine to replace the pens when they run out and make sure the thick paper he prints on stays in place.

Lyon said he has been criticized for using technology so prominently in his work, but he feels that it takes just as much artistry to create his own computer programs and machines to make his pieces come to life.

“My ideas and my blocks and my shapes and my designs are not done by a computer,” Lyon said. “That comes from me, from my mind, and then I just make it happen, whether it’s my hand on the pen or my machine — just another tool.”

“Linda,” a featured piece in the gallery, is one Lyon printed of his wife, Linda Lyon. According to research compiled by North, this piece is 77-by-46 inches and took more than 12 million lines of code and 11 days of continuous drawing on the ShopBot.

Linda said she enjoyed posing for Mike because it gave her a chance to see him work.

“I never know how he is going to do something!” Linda said, laughing. “Every piece just turns out to be his own blend of the thoughts in his head.”

Video walk-through of exhibition