Shirley Steele

STATEMENT

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: BUILDING PORTRAITS
A video exploration of the process of building a human likeness. Or a human life. Incomplete, imperfect, chaotic, beautiful.

This exhibit is a sequence of videos, each of which is a study in how successive marks coalesce into a portrait of a human face. Each face is different and imperfect, and each one is constructed one mark at a time. Sometimes the marks appear to lose direction or take a wrong turn or to go off the screen entirely, but eventually a face emerges. Portraiture turns out to be a verb, not a noun.

The artist identified this process in the aftermath of personal loss and the necessity of reconstructing life. But in the process, she saw that everybody is under construction all the time. No one is complete. We are all adding pieces to our lives in real time in a process that is often confusing, unpredictable, and filled with mistakes. Eventually, though, a portrait emerges, though unfinished. The construction continues.

A mixed-media artist, Shirley Steele works in the intersection of the humanist art tradition and new technology. As a research scientist at Bell Laboratories, Steele knew some of the early pioneers of computer art and came to recognize the creative potential of the new tools. In addition, she brought a scientific perspective to traditional arts training at the Art Students League in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Out of these different experiences came an ongoing curiosity about the space between traditional art and creative computation. Her artwork today is a continuing exploration of that space and its connection to individual lives.

Shirley Steele
http://www.steelestudio.com
shirleysteele01@gmail.com