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In
September of 1997 I stumbled onto the website of David Walters,
an artist living in St. Charles, IL. As a surrealist/intuitive
artist, I was most intrigued with his imagery. He also listed
as a major influence, the work of Max Ernst. The life and
work of Max Ernst has also had a major influence on my development
as an artist. I emailed Walters, told him I liked his work
and suggested he check out my site, which he did. An email
dialogue began and within a few weeks I suggested a collaboration.
But how? I lived in Philadelphia, PA. He lived in Illinois.
That's when the Digital Exquisite Corpse Project was born.
We decided to create digital works based on the surrealist
game called Exquisite Corpse, in which three or more artists
worked on a single drawing with little or no knowledge of
what the previous artist had done. The resulting work is frequently
bizarre or dreamlike, possibly charged with humor, surprising,
and often poetic. The old version used a piece of paper folded
in thirds. We would be using computers, Photoshop, and email.
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The next step was to invite
a third artist into the collaboration. That third artist
turned out to be Larry Parkes, from Blooming Prairie, MN.
Parkes and Walters had met via the Internet a short time
before after Parkes responded to a posting Walters had made
to a surrealist newsgroup.
Here's how our digital version
works, as devised by the three of us: The first artist creates
a digital image on his computer (7" x 3" at 300 dpi), then
emails the bottom quarter inch of the image to the next
artist. We call this quarter-inch piece the "reference strip."
The second artist uses this strip as a reference for starting
his section. When completed, he emails the bottom quarter
inch of his image to the third artist, who then creates
the last section. Once all sections are completed, we email
them to one another and they are put together in Photoshop
to form one image. There is no altering or touching up of
the image after the sections are completed. They go together
exactly as they arrive. We have, to date, created forty-two
Digital Exquisite Corpse works. The complete series can
be viewed on my website at: http://www.ravenswingstudio.com/docs/ecgallery.html.
Biography for Burnell Yow!:
Burnell Yow!, named by Philadelphia Magazine as one of the
twenty-five "hippest" people in Philly (June, 1996), has
maintained a full-time studio in Philadelphia since 1993,
and his works have been seen in galleries across the country,
as well as on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ravenswingstudio.com.
He works in the varied media
of painting, collage, sculpture and woodworking, and frequently
incorporates "found" and "altered-function" objects in his
work. Other works include The Yow! Cabinet Sculpture series,
and his most recent - a series of Altar Boxes created with
found objects and mixed media inside old drawers. These
works hang on the wall and are faced with plexiglass.
Yow!, a self-taught artist,
counts among his major influences the work of Max Ernst,
Rene Magritte, Miro, and Dali. In his own words: "In the
beginning the artist created heaven and earth using lines
drawn in the dirt with a stick. The tools have changed but
the job description hasn't. It is still about being and/or
revealing the god/goddess we all aspire to be through the
use of whatever creative tools we have at hand. To create
is to celebrate our connection to the cosmos."
Biography
for Larry Parkes:
Graduate of Moorhead State University - Moorhead, Minnesota.
BA Degree in Painting/Drawing. Participated in various shows
throughout the Midwest in the1980's. During this period
he worked strictly with blind line contour and/or critical
paranoia. The series culminated with a show in 1989 of large
encaustic pieces and pastel drawings that were shown in
Northfield, Minnesota during October of that year. Digital
Artwork began in 1995. He began his web page in June of
1995 (netword.com - use - parkes). Showing of recent digital
work will begin in 2001. During the past year he has been
using a computer to compose and record music. MP3 site:
mp3.com/parx .
Biography
for David Walters:
David Walters was born in Rantoul, IL in 1952. He studied
art at San Diego State University between 1971 and 1976,
then met and married Maureen in 1973. They have one son,
Matthew, who is now seventeen years old.
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