Low Tech/High Tech -- The Art Extremes of Bruce Price
Bruce Price's new art show Low Tech/High Tech features an unusual pairing: ink-on-paper drawings and digital paintings. There's a story ...
Norfolk, VA (Issues Wire / PRWEB) April 24, 2007 -- Bruce Price's new art show presents a very old way to make art and the newest way. Why the extreme mix? Here's the story:
For nine years Price explored what can be done with pure digital (that is, no photos or scanned material). His innovative work got in 40 juried shows; he won prizes; he was called "a visionary." In the process, he put in more than 6,000 hours clicking a mouse. Unfortunately, Price explains, "my left hand finally screamed, no more!'
When his hand started to cramp, he wondered, suppose he had an accident and was forced to use the other hand. "One day," he recalls, "I moved the mouse to the right side, and never looked back. It's gone well. I can still use the left for four-finger typing. It doesn't complain about that. But no mouse work."
Then Price had a further thought. Why not draw with the right hand to help make it more coordinated. He envisioned an art where the line would be loose -- all that his right hand was good at anyway. He'd make a virtue of necessity.
"What happened," Price recalls, "was very interesting. I ended up exploring this very ancient medium as if it were some brave new technology that nobody understood. I made experimental art with pens and markers exactly as I had made it with digital tools--aim for the new and extreme, try not to repeat myself, and, as Andre Gide put it, hope that God does the heavy lifting."
Low Tech/High Tech can be viewed at Word-Wise Modern, Price's studio/gallery, during the week of May 14-19, Monday to Saturday, 4-7 p.m. each day. The address is 6330 Newtown Road in Norfolk, Va.; phone 757-455-5020. The show includes more than 80 images -- 40 in ink, 40 in pixels.
Price (usually with his full name Bruce Deitrick Price) is also a writer and education activist. He is convinced that our schools could do a much better job. That's the thinking behind his site www.Improve-Education.org. It serves up good intellectual reading, and smart education ideas. "Did you ever," he asks, "watch Jay Leno's Jaywalking? People hardly know what ocean lies to the west of us. It's disgraceful."
Price sums up his life now: "scattered even for a Gemini." He finds that all the computer and internet options make it tempting to live that way. "I fully intend," he says, "to get back to work on a novel. Soon!" Still, there are compensations. A major poetry site called gotpoetry.com has stats on everything. "So I can know," Price says, "that one of my poems is in the top three Most Read during the last quarter. It's a kick."
Price has art, poetry and dozens of essays on many sites. "All this stuff," he sums it up, "is a lot of fun. But distracting. Now, if I can just make my right hand as precise with the mouse as my left hand was, maybe I can make more digital art. In the meantime I have discovered, for me, a whole new genre."
For more information, contact Word-Wise Modern: 757-455-5020.
For a preview of the show, visit http://Price.myexpose.com (then Gallery, page 4).
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