NOTRE DAME COLLEGE’S ART DEPARTMENT PRESENTS:
Andrew Reach: Between Technology and Dreams

South Euclid, Ohio-Notre Dame College’s Department of Art will present its first exhibition of the 2009-10 academic year with an exhibit of large scale digital prints by artist Andrew Reach. The exhibit entitled “Between Technology and Dreams” presents recent works by the artist. The show opens with a reception on September 10 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center in the college’s Administration Building. He will talk about his work, his approach to art-making and his disease in a talk on October 2nd, from 11:45 to 12:30 in the Performing Arts Center. Both the reception and gallery talk are free and open to the public. The show closes on October 8th.

Andrew Reach was originally trained as an architect but during the construction of the Frost Museum in Miami, Florida Reach developed a debilitating disease of the spine known as Scheuermann’s Kyphosis, a form of scoliosis which left him unable to complete the museum project and in constant pain. After a series of complicated surgeries Reach was left with no other option than to leave his chosen profession and start anew. Despite limited mobility, despair, chronic pain and daily physical therapy, Reach taught himself how to use Photoshop in the limited time he could sit upright each day.

Reach says of his exploration of this new technology, “I had always wanted to paint but my passion for my architecture was all encompassing. My disabilities changed that career path. There I was: marooned in my own despair and pain. I began teaching myself Photoshop so that I could have an outlet for my pent-up creativity. Something truly magical happened when I began learning Photoshop and was able to express both the frustration inside me and healing process happening inside my body. This was the beginning of an odyssey of self awareness and personal expression that continues in my work today. The ability to do my art is my refuge and personal oasis. In this place anything is possible.”

Reach uses a large format printer to create complex digital images of brilliant colors.  The work has evolved since his first surgery in 2003 into complex organic forms and high intensity color schemes. Reach says his earliest graphic works are biological meditations on the awareness of the healing process within his own body.

“I found myself inventing skeletal structures of my imagination. Stripping away the external to reveal mysterious internal structures became an exercise in mindfulness.” 

Despite limited physical mobility, Reach allows his mind and imagination to explore far reaching realms of geometric and organic shapes often with repeated patterns and images he identifies as WHIMSIES. These are whirling forms “carefree and unencumbered beings free of the constraints of gravity.”  He calls them iconic symbols that represent the artist himself. “They move freely in ways I am not able to. I also imagine them as peaceful. They help me feel peaceful. Much of these whimsy works are about motion, speed and the immediacy of being in the moment.”

Andrew Reach does not see the computer as a crutch but as an important tool in the hands of a disabled person. This tool has allowed him to explore realms of art he would not have considered in his previous life. While he has great admiration for the mid-20th century artists he grew up knowing such as the Abstraction Expressionists, the computer has allowed him to expand art in an area unavailable to many 20th century artists. The technology enables the artist to present the richest saturation of color in his work which he loves and is not afraid to use.

He does not want to be considered a “digital artist” because the term carries so many connotations. The software does not dictate his art, rather the ideas are already abound in his mind and imagination and the tools allow him a means to present those images to the public.

“I like the idea of merging the latest in digital technology with a more archaic approach to making my pictures. Being a Baby Boomer brought up in the analog world, this ‘pre-digital’ approach connects me with my past, while digital technology allows me to explore new ways of seeing that artists of previous generations could not have imagined.”

The gallery is open Monday through Friday from noon to 6:00 p.m.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

Rachel C. Morris (216) 373-5320 or rmorris@ndc.edu