Two local artists who have pushed boundaries in digital art opened their exhibition at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre this week.
Sechelt writer and digital artist Michael T. Hertz presents his Spaghetti Western -A Graphic Novel, as an example of what can be done with a lively imagination and several digital programs. The spaghetti western is a spoof on the popular Italian films such as A Fistful of Dollars, often filmed in Italy to represent the U.S. Wild West.
A young Sicilian girl escapes her country and goes to America in order to avoid an ancient curse on her family. Think Gothic novel here and get ready for some terrific genre blending. In the wilds of Wyoming, our heroine meets two half brothers, one Native American and the other half Native. Her journey then leads her to gangland Chicago where she will be pressed into marrying a mob boss. Find out her fate by reading the entire novel. An opportunity to do so will be at the exhibition where Hertz will show 25 individual boards or images from the novel, a synopsis and a digital display so viewers can watch the story unfold.
"It's not a traditional graphic novel," Hertz said. "It's more like a 19th century illustrated book."
Nor is it a comic book in which characters speak their dialogue in balloons. It's closer to animation or 3D art in its use of technology with such programs as Poser that Hertz has been using since the 1990s. Hertz's characters have been rendered in Poser 8, a program that allows him to dress or modify a human figure. His backgrounds are done in Vue 6 and the whole is put together or blended by PhotoShop. Hertz has further embraced technology in creating a book trailer on YouTube entitled Spaghetti Western Rides Again.
Bodhi Drope's exhibition, As I See It, is no less imaginative, particularly the segment of his show entitled Mandala Microcosms of Planet Earth. Here, he works with traditional design elements such as a circle and a square and blends them with his love of nature. The visual record reflects the joy of his creative, inquisitive and meditative soul at play. Landscapes of the Soul, another segment, is perhaps the most evocative and dream like.
In Birding Encounters, Drope takes a life long love of birds and represents them in manipulated photos that retain their authenticity to nature. The prints are not necessarily offered for bird identification but rather for sharing the depth of colour and life on display. For those familiar with Drope's sculpture, this show is something completely different and yet it gathers up much of his life's journey in art.
The show opened Nov. 2 and runs until Nov. 27 at the Doris Crowston Gallery of the Arts Centre in Sechelt (corner of Trail and Medusa).
