Gary Day

Printmaking and computer animation do have a lot in common. I have made prints since the early 1970’s and worked with computer generated imagery since the mid 1980’s. I find that the overlap of technologies is often the most rewarding area to explore. In gallery situations I often exhibit prints and animations in the same visual space for a more interactive viewing experience.

The impetus for my work is the interplay of media and electronic technologies with perception and forms of visualizing information. Since 1994 I have done several projects that explored eccentric bodies of knowledge, modes of information display, and recent developments in visual perception and neuroscience. For computer generated imaging I use animation programs and game engines to produce environments and short animations. The print mediums capable of capturing the level of detail present in the virtual constructions are digital printing and copperplate photogravure. I have found that wide format digital printers can be used in the same manner as a traditional press to produce prints that are similar in quality to hand printed editions.

 

Gary Day works with printmaking, computer generated imagery, and animation. He was born in 1950 near Great Falls, Montana. He earned his BA from Montana State University, and in 1976, an MFA in Printmaking from Florida State University.  As computer graphics began to develop in the 1980’s, he studied computer science at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He is retired and was a Clark Diamond Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Nebraska Omaha where he taught printmaking, computer animation, and game design. He is the former Director of the UNO Print Workshop, a center that prints and publishes limited edition fine art prints by visiting artists.
Day has been a visiting artist in Belgium, Israel, Spain, and the American Academy in Rome. He has received numerous awards including an Individual Artists Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987.

His prints and animations have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are included in many public and private collections including the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, and the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln. He has worked with many traditional print mediums including lithography, woodcut, intaglio, and photogravure and was an early developer of digital printmaking technologies. The work also includes animation and interactive spaces based on historical and contemporary information devices.

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