“Fauxtoshop”: Japan/Korea

Description

Join Southwest Minnesota State University Professor of Art Alma Hale for a showcase of recent artwork entitled “Fauxtoshop”: Japan/Korea. The pictures in this presentation are photographs taken by Digital Photography professor, Alma Hale, while on a sabbatical trip to Japan and South Korea. Photoshop manipulations were then applied to create faux watercolor paintings.

As digital media has matured, graphic designers and artists using it have evolved from wanting their work to look like it was produced digitally as a badge of honor, indicating they were on the cutting edge of technology, to hiding those digital fingerprints as much as possible and making the work appear handmade. Programs like Photoshop have become very good at those imitations for people who know how to manipulate the images. The pictures in this exhibit are photographs taken by Digital Photography professor, Alma Hale, while on a sabbatical trip to Japan and South Korea. Photoshop manipulations were then applied to create faux watercolor paintings. In his non-digital work, Professor Hale prefers to not hide the process; let the energy of the marks show in the work. So, in a way, this exhibit is an irony, as pixels are hidden behind the appearance of paint. And yet, the very act of printing these pictures on printer paper instead of watercolor paper acknowledges the computer and its role in their creation.