Isaac Victor Kerlow: Freedom and Imprisonment

Artist(s):

• Isaac Victor Kerlow

Title:

Freedom and Imprisonment

Exhibition:

• SIGGRAPH 1998: Touchware

Creation Year:

1985

Medium:

Etching

Size:

19" x 26 1/4"

Category:

• 2D & Wall-Hung

Keywords:

• computer plotter
• etching
• printmaking

Artist Statement:

Most of my artistic work from the 1980s consisted of etchings, silkscreens, and paintings based on elements that I created with 30 computer software and imagery that I drew or painted by hand. During that period, I developed and refined techniques for transferring high-resolution 30 computer images onto traditional printmaking media, in particular extremely fine aquatint photo-etching techniques and computer-controlled engraving. In Freedom and Imprisonment (1985), the right half of the work was engraved directly onto four cooper plates by a computer-controlled flatbed plotter that had the pen replaced with a steel needle.

I have continued to combine 30 computer-generated images with hand-drawn and hand-painted elements, and in the early 1990s, I started to use digital printers to edition my work. Blue Pearl (1998) combines paintings that were scanned into the system with 30 computer renderings that apply some of the paintings as environmental maps to the geometry in the scene. I am interested in using computers to generate emotional works with a gestural and unpolished quality to them. I am less interested in the computer’s ability to create perfect geometry or aseptic simulations of reality.