When using tech to make art, the choices are many. You can pick your colors and effects on a display, or you can use a computer aided device to create those effects on canvas.

Whilst in college I used to teach art classes, and my students were visually challenged. One of my older kids came to class one day, and wanted to draw on paper. They took a sheet, and a marker, and drew a single point. I asked them what they had drawn. They had just hit their arm into a sharp corner, and “this” was what it felt like.

Next, we used a computer aided spray gun to make lots of those points on paper, and with a layering effect. This time, the kid could actually feel around the paper for those sharp points.

The next day, this kid came to class and we painted by hand, lots of sharp dots in a pattern using paint, glitter, glue, and let it dry. I asked them about their piece, and I learnt that they had tried to mimic a mother-board! They had been helping their dad with their home computer and had felt around the mother-board. “Lots of sharp points”, was what they wanted to draw.

In the first instance, tech was just a tool. The next day, however, it turned into inspiration- inspiration to know what you want to make art with!

So, what do you see tech as? A tool? Or inspiration? I’d love to know! And I’ll also see you soon.

G’Bye,
Gaurvi.

Photo Credits

First photo is from Pinterest
Second photo is from Pinterest

Guest Author Bio
Gaurvi Joshi

Gaurvi is a B2B Blogger with her own tech blog. She taught Art to visually challenged students while still at college. She observes artists and creators in her community while engaging in visual art once in a while.

Blog / Website: New Tech

Some of my finest work:

I love you Mom, I want you to know that
I know you are something
than just an old doormat.

You are my dad, I am your daughter
I love you more
than a swim in the water.

Around the same time, I started writing letters, thanks to my mom. She’s no longer with us, but if you filled a room with family and friends and asked them what they remember most about her, it would be her letters (her laugh would be a close second.) I’m honored to carry the torch.

Whispering Seaweed

Now I’m all grown up. I’m still making my own cards, with original art along with my original photos, but now I have them printed, which makes them look a tad more professional. I’m leaving them blank on the inside in the interest of versatility (for now; you never know when a good rhyme will strike.) You can see them here at Good Wares. And I still write letters, but I’ve upped the ante and am now making my own envelopes too.

Running in a Sundress

Here’s the thing. I woke up one day and realized it’s what I want to do. For serious. As a day job. Age has changed the way I look at things. For years, I never thought I was good enough at anything to go all in, to really chase it. Today, being good enough doesn’t even enter into it. Passion, fulfillment and pure joy are my guides. And even though the line between exciting and scary is extremely thin, I’m going for it, propelled by one very thought-provoking question:

If not now, when?

Image Credits

Photo and artwork  ©  Carol Good

Visit Carol’s Website: carol anne good

Noisy distortion with a blast of color.

Attempting to escape from the dream world.

Degraded edit, with plenty of noise and grain for a creative vintage feel.

Image Credits

All Images Are © Austin Sessler

Guest Artist Bio
Austin Sessler

I am a 19 year old digital artist from Arizona. I focus on trying to inspire others to chase their creative ideas, and show people that there is no limit to our creativity, which is why I find myself in many different fields of art. My works can be found on Instagram @youngdumnumb

Follow Austin Sessler on: Facebook | Instagram

The “crazy flower” and all of it’s beauty dissolving in the sunlight.

A bird taking in nature’s beauty while being viewed through a trippy lens.

Imagine being stranded in the ocean, you’re trying to swim to safety. Nothing looks the same.

Image Credits

All Images Are © Austin Sessler

Guest Artist Bio
Austin Sessler

I am a 19 year old digital artist from Arizona. I focus on trying to inspire others to chase their creative ideas, and show people that there is no limit to our creativity, which is why I find myself in many different fields of art. My works can be found on Instagram @youngdumnumb

Follow Austin Sessler on: Facebook | Instagram

Broken Column: The Monuments of Forgetting

The forced migration of the Partition of India displaced 20 million people in 1947 and 30 million people in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. This anti-memorial seeks to memorialize this mass displacement of people.

Silent Waters: The Uncounted

This anti-memorial reframes maps and cartography, as the skin of the nation. It examines the partitions of countries from the 20th century – India, Ireland, Palestine, Cyprus, Vietnam, Korea, Germany, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Remembering the Crooked Line: The Skin of the Nation

Image Credits

All Images Are © Pritika Chowdhry

Guest Artist Bio
Pritika Chowdhry

Pritika Chowdhry is a socio-political, activist artist, curator, and writer. Born and brought up in India, Pritika is currently based in Chicago, IL, USA. She has an MFA in Studio Art, and an MA in Visual Culture and Gender Studies, both from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Pritika’s works are featured in prestigious museum and corporate collections, such as the Weismann Museum, American Swedish Institute, the Target Corp, in Minneapolis, MN; in addition to several private collections.

Through her art projects, Pritika presents narratives elided from dominant cultural discourse to disrupt hegemonic collective memories. ​Her large-scale sculptures and site-sensitive installations reference the body to memorialize unbearable and difficult memories.

Pritika has also founded the Counter-Memory Project and the Partition Memorial Project as part of her research-based artistic praxis. Transnational in scope, her works comprise sculptural art installations that excavate counter-memories from traumatic geopolitical events, such as, partitions of countries, civil and military wars, riots, border violence, genocides, and terrorist attacks. Pritika makes anti-memorials, which flips the idea of traditional memorialization and nationalist monuments on its head. She seeks to connect seemingly disparate geopolitical contexts as she feels that it is important to bring bridges into being. Counter-memories of communities and nations provide the viscera with which she builds these bridges in her work.

​As an interdisciplinary artist, she migrates between fibers, latex, paper, clay, glass, metal, wood, poetry, and drawing. The maker in her enjoys the sensuality of different materials, and the scholar in her pursues the cultural references that different materials introduce into her work.

Pritika has shown her works nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions in the Weismann Museum in Minneapolis, Queens Museum in New York, the Hunterdon Museum in New Jersey, the Islip Art Museum in Long Island, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, the DoVA Temporary in the University of Chicago, the Brodsky Center in Rutgers University, and the Cambridge Art Gallery in Massachusetts.

Moreover, Pritika is the recipient of a Vilas International Travel Fellowship, an Edith and Sinaiko Frank Fellowship for a Woman in the Arts, a Wisconsin Arts Board grant, and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. Pritika has taught at Macalester College, and College of Visual Arts, both in St. Paul, Minnesota. Published scholarship about Pritika’s work has come out in peer-reviewed research publications and various exhibition catalogs.

Pritika has presented her studio research projects at various national conferences, such as the International Arts Symposium at NYU, The Contested Terrains of Globalization at UC-Irvine, and the South Asian Conference at UW-Madison. Pritika also participates in panels and gives lectures and artist talks about her work by invitation.

Please visit www.pritikachowdhry.com to learn more about Pritika Chowdhry’s art and curatorial projects.

Blog / Website: Pritika Chowdhry

Follow Pritika Chowdhry on: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin

trapped in visible form 35 x 42 oil on paper 2016

Everything begins as thought then manifests as a physical reality. We are not going to fix our world without healing the patterns of thought that are driving the world into its present state. By delving beneath the turbulence of thoughts we can uncover in ourselves “something” that we begin to realize lies behind all the discursiveness, changes, and deaths of the world.

seen the moment you look 23 x 24 oil on paper 2016

The paper, like our memories will age, become fragile, be affected by light yet will remain as those things we search for and cherish possibly in the attic or basement, an archeological site or a memory, much like in our lives. It’s ordinary insignificant quality becomes special.

the owner of chaos is thought 38 x 39 oil on paper 2016

Touched in any way there’s a response; a fingerprint, wrinkle, rip, drip or tear, which then becomes texture and language, traces of process and practice as echoes or footprints challenging our conditioned response to things worn, torn, old wrinkled or ripped as good or bad, acceptable or not acceptable; challenging our dualistic way of seeing the world.

Image Credits

All Images Are © Hildy Maze

Hildy Maze Artist Bio Hildy Maze is an American artist with Turkish, Russian, Austrian heritage. Born in Brooklyn,NY she received a BFA from Pratt Institute. For many years Hildy lived and worked in her loft in Tribeca, NYC before moving to East Hampton,NY where she currently works and lives. Her work is influenced by her 25 year study and practice of Tibetan Buddhist meditation involving the recognition of the intrinsic  nature of mind. Hildy’s work visually plays with how we obscure our recognition of this clear,empty awareness of mind. The provocative titles help to create an attentive environment. Ms.Maze has exhibited her work through the U.S. including NYC, Long Island City, Brooklyn, California, Beijing, China, Cologne,Germany. She has won numerous awards and is in several private collections in the U.S, Europe, and Asia.

Blog / Website: Hildy Maze

Follow Hildy Maze on: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin

French Surrealist Art – Patrick Dechavanne

As with all art and particularly with surrealist art, one should let the art speak for itself without art commentary. I dare say, however, for me the work appears appropriate for ongoing news stories of our changing planet. With that, I say no more and leave it to the viewers to enjoy the artist´s painting and provide their own interpretations.

The artist´s biography can be viewed by following this link: Patrice Dechavanne Biography

Image Credits

Images is © Patrick Dechavanne

Guest Author Bio
Charalee Graydon

Charalee holds a degree in arts and two degrees in law, LLB (82) with distinction and a B.C.L. (Oxon). She is presently pursuing a doctorate in Mediation and Conflict Resolution.

Following receipt of a Rhodes scholarship in 1982, Charalee pursued post-graduate legal studies in Oxford, England. She held academic positions in England, New Zealand, and Canada and practised law in Canada. She has a diploma in Freelance and Feature Writing from the London School of Journalism.

She developed programmes for students, judges and the public and published academic works on legal issues and crime and punishment. She created and taught a course at the University of Alberta on sentencing and has provided radio and television interviews on this topic as well as on the topics of collaboration and mediation. Her recent work involves climate change, a world in transition and methods of conflict resolution.

Charalee published an interactive book of literary fiction, The Judgment Game in 2013 and its companion book, Let’s Play the Game in 2015, using the concept of collaboration for conflict resolution. Her science fiction book, Can We Save the Human Race, explores earth in the twenty-third century, technological advances, human rights and questions of reality and fantasy.

Her book, El Nuevo Camino: Casos Legales, has recently been published.

Blog / Website: Charaleeg.com

Last summer, I returned to my childhood home, an abandoned schoolhouse, to create art from the things my mother hoarded over the years and explore questions she can no longer answer in her current mental state. In transforming my experience of the space and the physical objects into art, I am transforming my relationship to my story, my perspective on who I am and where I am from. Some of the themes I’m exploring are life/death, creation/destruction, and order/chaos being part of the same process.

Third Life, reclaimed wood, 36×60″, 2014

2 years ago my mother was in a bicycle accident, and in returning home to help take care of her, I realized I needed to take care of things within myself and resolve my relationship to my past. My mother suffered severe brain damage from the accident, but with this artistic process I am able to explore questions she can no longer answer. I am using this project as an opportunity to reconnect with my family, to explore the time-capsule of my parents hoarded objects, and find beauty and love in all of it.

Page 1, found paper in wood frame, 36x36x10″, 2015

It is my hope that people take away from this project the importance of shedding light on difficult experiences, accepting all parts of our selves, and sharing our stories. What makes us unique makes us beautiful.

1000 Prayers for my Mother, fabric on metal box spring, 42×72″, 2015

Image Credits

All Images Are © Stephanie Calvert

Stephanie Calvert Artist Bio

Stephanie Calvert is a mixed-media artist based in NYC.

Blog / Website: Stephanie Calvert

Follow Stephanie Calvert on: Twitter

120 – 62″ x 28″ – Recycled mixed media on sailboat sail

It made me feel sick to my stomach. It’s funny that we as humans are, for whatever reason, convinced by society, not to care about plastic waste and that ‘use once’ plastics are a necessity for a life of convince. Here I am producing such a huge amount of unnecessary plastic waste that will forever be a part of my carbon footprint. It was at that moment, as I stood there staring at that ball of hideous plastic on the floor, that I decided that I never want to feel like that again. This forever changed me as an artist.

Great Plains – Great Plains – 54″ x 54″ Recycled/reclaimed paint on sailboat sail (sailcloth) on a handmade frame

At the time of my realization, that I will become an artist that speaks for the environment, I lived in a high-rise condo building in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. On the ground floor of this building there was a large garbage room where residents can drop off large household items that are no longer desirable, leftover cans of paint, and other larger items that they couldn’t stuff down their floor’s designated garbage chute. By the end of every month there was a large pile of discarded, cheap, particleboard furniture and old appliances. Amongst the heap of briefly used, almost new, yet broken items, I found a couch and a couple of half used cans of paint. I began the task of disassembling the couch to reclaim its wooden frame and removing all of the leather and ‘pleather’ that I would later sew back together as a stand-in for canvas.  This was my first recycled art project.

The Crossing – – 62″ x 28″ – Recycled mixed media on sailboat sail

As of February 2015, I am now painting with and on 100% recycled materials. The frames, whenever possible are also constructed from reclaimed wood. This year I have had the good fortune of developing a relationship with the paint recycling company, Loop Paint, who generously provides me with all the paint for my projects. All of the material that I paint on is reclaimed, mainly sailboat sails (sailcloth).

Sailcloth was traditionally made from linen, cotton or hemp, typically in the form of canvas, though modern sails are rarely made from these biodegradable materials. Most sails are now made from synthetic fibres like low-cost nylon, polyester or carbon fibres. Because of sailcloth’s synthetic nature, it is an ideal candidate for repurposing. I am not a sailor, so I cannot reduce the number of sails I go through and certainly do not have any control over the sails that are produced, though I can reuse what others no longer have a need for and certainly recycle whatever is left after that.

Early Season – 42″ x 19″ Recycled mixed media on reclaimed sailboat sail (sailcloth)

I believe that everyone needs to take a step back and evaluate every decision that impacts the health of our planet.  We need to look at what we as a human race are doing as a whole and what we can do to change things for the better. We need to own our mistakes, past and present and move forward. We need to think about long term environmental preservation, and not short term financial profits. We are in this together and need to protect the life on this planet, especially the life that cannot protect itself.

Through the Trees – 62″ x 28″ – Recycled mixed media on sailboat sail

My goal is for my work to inspire others and for it to become a symbol of change.

Image Credits

All Images Are © Robert Slivchak

Robert Slivchak Artist Bio

One of my biggest inspirations for pursuing a career in fine art is my father. At a young age I was always fascinated with his ability to work with any medium and his gift of being able to transform it into something beautiful. His encouragement to express myself artistically at a young age was key to my artistic development.

I am an abstract artist whose work does not depart from representational accuracy, but by the climate that surrounds me and my painting process. I use thick and thin layers of acrylic paint, applied using palette knives, rags, sponges and brushes, pulling back and removing portions of each layer until the result is something that’s synchronized with what I am feeling.

My most recent works reflect two sides of urban life. I love the contrasts between grunge and modern style with my paintings representing the grunge. I want to drift away from clean, sharp, calculated lines and tell a story with layers of roughly removed colours that show history, like layers of paint peeling on the exterior walls of an old building, revealing its storied past.

Whenever possible, I like to reclaim/harvest waste materials, like wood and paint when creating a new piece. I think that it is everyone’s social and environmental responsibility to create less waste. More often than not, I build my own frames, stretch my own canvas and prime the canvas with recycled paint.  I also offer custom creations to compliment each client’s colour palette. Reuse, reduce and recycle.

Blog / Website: Slivchak Fine Art – Photography

Follow Robert Slivchak on: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Saatchi Art

‘Joie de Vivre’ – 69 x 98″ – 2014

My current paintings take inspiration from the street. I’m fascinated by time’s harsh effects on the city’s surfaces, such as construction hoardings, that become layered and weathered while being subjected to human marks and seemingly random actions in a constant state of flux; symbolic of life. In stark contrast I observe the sophistication of silken evening gowns shimmering in fashion designer’s window displays. For me a story unfolds.

Sugar and Spice – 69 x 48″ – 2014

Stan is an elected member of the Ontario Society of Artists  and is represented by Toronto-based Abbozzo Gallery, a member of the Art Dealer’s Association of Canada.

Image Credits

All Images Are © Stan Olthuis

Stan Olthuis Artist Bio

Born in north central Alberta, Canada Stan was raised in the tight-knit rural Dutch-Calvinist community of Neerlandia. He knew his calling from the beginning and declared it when he was 9 years old by carving it in the wet cement of a new barn floor; ‘occupation – artist’. At age 17 he escaped to Chicago to study art, literature, philosophy and history. A prevailing commitment to process is the result of the influences of masters like Henrik Krijger, Tom Hodgson, Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg. He graduated from the OCAD experimental art department in Toronto with special mention and currently lives and works in Toronto.

“Abbozzo Gallery is pleased to represent award winning artist Stan Olthuis. In December 2014, the gallery held a successful solo exhibition of Stan’s latest work titled ‘Rags to Riches’. Stan’s paintings are a complex dichotomy – both in process and imagery. Light, feathery, feminine dresses float on rough grounds; the body of the dress resembling a triangular structure calling to mind the myriad associations of the triangle as form and spiritual energy. Stan’s work has a wide appeal and we look forward to our continuing association with him.” Ineke Zigrossi – Director
Stan is an internationally recognized and award-winning, mixed-media artist focusing on energy, gesture and time. All his work is deeply grounded in drawing and the figure; a love affair formed at an early age. He is unbiased with respect to artistic medium, materials or subject matter and shifts easily to utilize any discipline that best manifests a concept. Inspired by the abstract expressionists, process becomes master as a piece develops. Works span printmaking to earth installations. He is collected privately and corporately in Canada, France, Japan, Norway the USA and Mexico.

“As paintings, Stan Olthuis’ works are situational; whereby the artist makes choices about composition, texture, form, at a moment in time. And so they relate to the body, to space, to the limits of time, to experience, and above all – process. Life, process and art become a journey and the artist is a witness, provocateur, a medium, above all. The traces of time’s passage are ephemeral, and draw their inspiration from the moment. Originating out of Olthuis’ love of drawing, these multi-media works become sculptural, very much 3-D, an interweaving web of line, texture, that exists on the surface of things, that evidences the surface nature of perception, of our relation to the world around us – very much actions that encourage a dialogue on perception. Life is reified through the actions, the process of Stan Olthuis’ art. The art comes full circle, defines the moment, art emerges in time, art into time. Art is a journey – the artist a passenger and participant, who builds the boat you travel on. That boat is art, the boat is life… experience builds the trajectory, engages us in so many ways”.
John K. Grande

Blog / Website: Stan Olthuis Studio

Follow Stan Olthuis on: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Instagram | Pinterest