This coming year ushers in a great opportunity for digital artists. "Digital art is the fastest growing medium for artists in the world," said Bodhi Drope, whose sculpture and digital work have been seen in the past at Gibsons Public Art Gallery (GPAG). Drope wants to encourage that trend on the Coast. The idea has been brewing for some time, especially after he took a trip to Vancouver to have some of his images printed. There is no printing facility on the Coast as yet that can process custom fine art prints up to two metres in length on the appropriate archival non-acid paper. After speaking with owner Chris Royals of Tricera Imaging in Vancouver, Drope was surprised to learn that the company services 30 digital customers on the Coast. Who are they, Drope wondered, and how many are developing their art? He was instrumental in bringing a previous digital art show to the GPAG a few years ago, and it drew much interest, eliciting entries from the Coast and Powell River. Now, he proposes mounting a new professional and juried show, The Art of Digital Exhibition, to be held Aug. 21 through Oct. 6 with an opening reception on Aug. 23.Drope compares the advent of digital art, the manipulation of images in the computer, to the art world arrival of lithography that took years to be accepted as an art form. The signs that digital art is on its way can be seen when the Emily Carr College of Fine Arts, as one member of a partnership, recently opened a full-time professional graduate degree program in digital media.
Drope wants this forthcoming show, The Art of Digital Exhibition, to offer some path forward for local artists and to be prestigious enough to list on their resumes.
A call for artists for the digital show will go out this spring. The work will include any art created or manipulated via any form of digital technology, such as digital painting, computer based illustration, digital manipulated photography, digital montages and collages. It will not include images that are simply captured with a digital camera or are printed on a digital printer. The artwork submitted will be in print format, matted and behind glass, suitable for the walls of the gallery.
A three-person jury will examine the submissions: a local artist of great critical faculty, Maurice Spira; the owner of Vancouver Photo Workshops, Marc Kougel; and Vancouver photographer Michael Levin, who has received, among other awards, first place in New York at the 2006 Photo Expo Plus event and first place in the professional fine art category at the Prix de la Photographie, Paris.
The placement awards will offer as prizes printing services, usually an expensive proposition for impecunious artists. First prize is a 1.1-metre print on media of your choice and second and third prize offer similar printing for lesser sizes. Drope hopes to have a viewer's choice award that will encourage the public to consider the art more thoughtfully. If the turnout for the show is good it may become an annual event and develop a much broader audience.
Drope has created several bodies of work in digital format, such as the fishing boat series that he developed from original photos taken in Chile where he once lived. Currently, he is opening a show, Landscapes of the Soul, at the Amelia Douglas Gallery on the New Westminster campus of Douglas College. He is excited that many students at this multicultural college will see the work, and he will seek their reaction. The show will exhibit 54 digital prints from the series and some sculptures from his miniature series (mixed medium wood and gelcoat). The Douglas College show opens on Jan. 10 and runs until Feb. 27.
For more information about the forthcoming Digital Art Show, contact Drope at [email protected] or at 604-886-4938.
