Jeff Mihalyo

As a visual artist I am interested in a variety of processes that can produce a unique image. My art school education; lead me to a carrier of painting and digital illustration and design. Mixing these disciplines has helped to inspire experimentation with old and new technology with regards to image making. Two separate bodies of work are represented here. Both are based on photographic principals and are the result of a digital process. The black and white photographs are created using standard hardware and software. An image is captured (All of which in this case, in 1990 off the Washington coast.) It is scanned and is digitally manipulated to resemble Rorschach’s famous inkblot tests. Later I took the process further and created negatives, with which I could produce photographic prints in the darkroom. They are beautiful as large photographic prints, but are also expensive and time consuming. Here you have the opportunity to reproduce them affordably and quickly. The color art works in this presentation are created using scanner photography. I construct and light small sets in which I place a flatbed scanner. The scanner is used to capture the image as if it were a traditional camera. I prefer to use old 3-pass scanners because of their color processing hardware. Each pass receives a separate frequency of color, which enables me to manipulate the lighting while the image capture is occurring. Each exposure takes an average of 5 minutes.