Sample press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / Friday, February 27, 2015

Senior art student presents capstone exhibit of digital artwork and animation after a 30-year interruption

Show runs March 15-30; Free opening reception set for March 16

Contacts: Patrick Williams, MSUB University Relations and Communications, 406.657.2270

"Just Forget", digital mixed media.

"Cannot Hold", vector graphic

Art student Patrick Williams will present his senior capstone exhibit, "Cognitive Divergence," March 15-30 in the student gallery on the first floor of the Liberal Arts building on the Montana State University Billings campus.

An opening reception, free and open to the public, will be held March 16 from 5 to 7 p.m. Refreshments (sadly, non-alcoholic) will be served.

Williams' art education was interrupted when he took a summer job as a graphic artist in 1985, and forgot to quit for nearly 30 years. The digital revolution during that time saw an unprecedented change in the tools available to artists, and Williams changed his skill set and focus along with it.

"I originally planned a concentration in drawing, with a lot of photography and sculpture thrown into the mix. Then, as digital tools appeared, and I was required to learn them for my career as a commercial artist, my fine art began to use more new media and fewer traditional materials. When I finally decided to return to school and finish my degree, and discovered that a new media concentration was an option, the choice was obvious."

The exhibition features two distinct styles.The first, a series of intensely-complex vector graphics and animations, are strongly influenced by the Op Art movement in the 1960s, and the work of Bridget Riley in particular. The second is a series of more personally emotional pieces, which combine 3-D rendered imagery, photography, and digital painting, all layered onto images of rust and corrosion.

"The two styles of art reflect two very different aspects of my personality and creativity. The Op Art-influenced pieces are an exploration of the creativity from the rational, analytical, and mathematical parts of myself -- even though artists are rarely mathematically-inclined, that part of me has always needed a creative outlet, just as much as the more traditionally emotive artist part of me."

Both sets of images are unified by the way they explore the boundaries of perception, where depth and motion and color are often filled in by the mind where they don't actually exist. "I try to find the places where years of experience seeing have taught us to interpret patterns of light and dark as indicative of a specific type of motion or depth -- and then to change the rules, so the brain still sees those things, even when faced with a reality where they don't exist."