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

It was a fairly large show and very fun to hang (and hang with her again)!  Rebecca organized the images in an interesting way — boys on one side, girls on the other!  It made a whacky sort of sense to me!

When I arrived for the opening, Rebecca had arranged for Camille Dautrich (writer for Springfield’s News Leader paper) to interview me which was pretty fun, though I’m no expert at that sort of thing.  Then I presented an hour-long lecture copiously illustrated with slides and video and THAT was a blast!  Maybe 30 faculty and students were present, they had lots of interesting questions and comments, and I felt it had all gone very well.  Several arts faculty took us to a great dinner (Linda and my daughter, Allegra, were with me) and, exhausted and a little drunk, I slept most of the way home while Linda drove.  Very satisfying event!

Here’s a short video walk-through of the exhibition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVTWyU4pgXQ

North installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

East installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

North-East installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

South installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

hour-long slide and video lecture was well received - audience seemed especially to love the many short videos of work in process. (photo: Rebecca Miller)

Drury University

The Department of Art & Art History and the Pool Art Center Gallery

Paintings, Drawings, and Prints: MIKE LYON

Pool Art Center Gallery

940 N. Clay Avenue
Springfield, MO  65802
417-873-7263
www.drury.edu/pacgallery

March 5-26, 2010 viewing hours: Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm and Thursday 8am – 8pm

Artist Talk Friday, March 5, 6-7pm

Opening Reception Friday, March 5, 6-9pm

This review appeared in the Springfield News Leader:

NEWS-LEADER. News-Leader.com Tuesday, March 16, 2010 78

Artist creates through computer programs

by Camille DAUTRlCH

It’s complicated.

No, I’m not changing disciplines and reviewing Meryl Streep’s recent movie. I’m talking about the process by which Kansas City artist Mike Lyon creates his monumental works of art, now on display at Drury’s Pool Art Center.

Armed with a knowledge of centuries- old printmaking techniques as well as a mastery of how to write contemporary computer programs, Lyon uses his brains, rather than his hands, to create his art. The results, a qmple dozen of which are packed into Drury’s gallery, are fascinating. The more you look, the more you see.

Occasionally, people give him a hard time about the way he makes art, Lyon said, claiming it’s the computer, not him, that’s responsible for the finished product. He begs to differ, however.

“I spend months figuring out the codes for my works,” he said, adding that every movement of the pen or airbrush is an X-Y coordinate. “I write programs that write programs.”

Lyon’s facility with computers came early. With a college degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, he went to work for his family’s cattle- hide processing business in Kansas City in 1976. While there, he developed a computerized system to facilitate the grading of hides.

That idea took off in a big way, and Lyon was able to sell his invention and go to work full time as an artist.

Dautrich/Exhibit should appeal to artistic, analytical

In addition to his architecture degree, Lyon earned a BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute, and before he made art on the computer, he made it like everybody else.

“When I was a student, I stood at an easel and painted what I saw,” he said, “and I did it well.”

Talking to Lyon, however, it’s clear he’s too precise a thinker to spend his days with a brush in hand. Writing computer programs to make prints, drawings and paintings was the logical next step.

Still, history plays a role. He’s heavily influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, as well as by the 17th century French engraver Claude Mellan.

It was Mellan’s “Sudarium of Jesus” that inspired Lyon’s pen-and-ink work of his wife, Linda, a huge portrait created out of spiraling squares that begin at the center of Linda’s nose. Get up close to the work, and it’s a series of incredibly-detailed squares, but back up, and Linda’s face, more than six feet tall, comes immediately into view.

Portraiture, especially faces, makes up the majority of this exhibit, although there are several full-length representations, a couple of landscapes, and a stunning back view of a nude that’s front and center when you enter the gallery. Lyon’s parents, his wife, his son and several self-portraits are all included in the show.

Viewers will no doubt make comparisons to the work of Chuck Close when seeing these paintings and prints, but there is a difference. Lyon has his own agenda and his own techniques, although the largehead format is similar to that of Close.

This exhibit should appeal to both the artistic and the analytical mind, and Lyon believes that he has found a way to combine scientific understanding with aesthetics.

“I don’t know how to describe how I feel,” he said, “but I do feel. Also, I like figuring stuff out.”

The exhibit continues through March 26 at Drury University’S Pool Art Center, 940 N. Clay Avenue. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday.

For more information, call 873-7263.

Camille Dautrich reviews the arts for the News-Leader.

PRINT QUARTERLY, XXVI, 2009, 4, Page 409

NOTES

MIKE LYON. For various reasons, very modest exhibition catalogues are sometimes worth noting in Print Quarterly. This is the case with Figuring it Out: Prints and Drawings by Mike Lyon (Manhattan, KS, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, 2009, 8 pp., 10 col. ills., free), which includes an essay by Bill North. For this photorealist printmaker has made use of his knowledge of computerized technology to create a series of digitally based colour woodcuts. Mike Lyon studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Kansas City Art Institute before going to work in [976 in his family’s cattle-hide processing business. There he invented a computerized system to automate the process of grading cattle hides. This led him to set up a successful computer hardware and software design business, which specialized in providing warehouses with a computerized system for automating orders. In 1991 Lyon sold the company and became a full-time artist. A great admirer of Japanese aesthetics and printmaking and an avid collector of ukiyo-e prints, he taught Japanese woodblock techniques at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, Connecticut. He based the designs for his own woodcuts on photographs. Lyon used Prussian Blue ink similar to that used in aizuri-e woodcuts and followed Japanese methods in printing. Rather than printing from multiple blocks, however, he used a single block, reprinting it to achieve the results that he desired by the reduction woodcut method.

In 2004 Lyon decided to use his knowledge of computers to further his art, acquiring a ShopBot CNC (computer numerically controlled router) designed for woodworking applications. As North describes, he adapted the machine to carve his blocks. The first woodcut that Lyon printed using the ShopBot was carved from fifteen separate cherry plywood blocks, although he maintained his approach to the work conceptually as a reduction woodcut. This print of a full frontal head close to the picture plane bears similarity to some of the works of Chuck Close. More recently Lyon has created a large-scale print of a reclining nude, using paper especially made for him by Iwano Ichibei. To print it, he designed and made his own printing press with a five-by-ten feet bed, and adapted the elements of an electric garage door to act as a drawer, which cantilevers over the bed laying the paper on the block as the drawer retracts. Lyon has also used the machine to create immense photographically based pen and ink drawings.

The exhibition also included eighteen Japanese woodblock prints from the artist’s own collection. Dating from between c. 1767 and 1928, these were chiefly of actors and beautiful women, the two illustrated in the catalogue being expressive close-up facial portraits. Cori Sherman North provides a brief description of ukiyo-e prints to accompany them. MARTIN HOPKINSON