July Issue 2000
3D VRML Exhibit at Wrightnow Gallery in Charlotte, NC's NODA
Robert Tyler Strouth will be featured at the Wrightnow Gallery in the North Davidson Arts District (NODA) of Charlotte, NC, from July 1-31, 2000. His exhibit is entitled, 3D VRML.
Strouth started exhibiting in the NODA area in Nov. of 1995. Since then, he has painted over 100 paintings in his spare time. The majority of them have been surrealist in nature, but the artist has worked in other styles like abstracts, landscapes, portraits and religious art. Some of Strouth's earliest paintings from 1983 were done with the desire to work in computers, designing 3D environments. At that time, computers that did 3D imagery were very expensive and were mostly located in California. So he didn't have access to anything to create what he was envisioning.
Strouth eventually got a job creating computer games, business graphics, designing environments and objects for a company called Macrocom in Marietta, GA. It was managed by a college professor from Georgia Tech. Strouth was going to art school at the Art College of Atlanta, but later stopped going there and transferred to the Art Institute of Atlanta for commercial art reasons. Strouth says, "PC Computers were still very new in 1983 so the graphics were rough, to say the least, but some nice effects could be created that eventually led to what we have today."
Strouth has held different kinds of computer art or graphics jobs at different times since then. Computer artist and graphic designers are everywhere so the competition is brutal.
One day while surfing the web Strouth ran across some info about web3D and VRML. It was a reminder of what he wanted to do back in 1983. "With the advent of the internet over the last few years I recently registered for a web site domain and started working on my own site. I also upgraded my computer to work with web design and 3D VRML. I have changed the design of the site several times to learn the process and to experiment with different options and to see what I like best. Up until then I had a simple site on a free ISP. It was no big deal, it had a couple of pages that showed some of my paintings and some info about myself and was just the normal slideshow art thing of my paintings."
Strouth wanted a little more out of the presentation than just a boring slideshow. "You know the ones - click on a picture and see a larger version of the picture, wait for the download and then look for a few seconds and go through the process again with the next one" the artist explains. He finds himself getting bored quickly this way and has trouble staying awake, no matter how good the artwork is.
Strouth started working on a 3D world that is his own gallery environment, making it look the way he wanted to present artwork - the way he envisioned it, back in 1983. He continues to work on new designs that are surrealist in nature and is trying to take the ideas he has and express them or present them in a 3D VRML environment instead of the ideas represented on a flat surface like a canvas.
The show at Wrightnow Gallery will be much like other shows, i.e. paintings of Strouth's hanging on the walls, but he wants to also present other artists and the general public to the idea of VRML and to think of the possibilities of viewing art that way. Nothing will take the place of seeing art face to face and art galleries will not be replaced by computers and the internet, but it offers another way of presenting art to the public and to a wider audience. Hopefully, and most likely, it will bring more people to galleries, museums and other exhibits.
3D VRML will have many paintings that have been shown in the NODA before but not seen in a couple of years. A lot of people will see them for the first time. Strouth will also have several paintings that have not been seen before. It will contain information about 3D web and VRML, offer links etc. much like his web site but it will be in real time. No clicking around.
For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings or call the gallery at 704/895-7441 or e-mail the artist at (illumic@hotmail.com). For further information about 3D web and VRML at the following web sites: (http://www.about.com) and (http://www.web3d.about.com).
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