On the Selfies

When I was in Art School back in the 80′s, I worked at the school’s ‘Slide Library’ for several years.  This is where artist images were copied out of books or illustrations and converted into 35mm slides for use by teachers, students and research.  In today’s digital mass media and web world this is nothing but a quaint relic of a time gone by. The frames and labels used for the self-portrait series on this site come from discarded glass slides originally used to mount film images. Just outside the slide library studios was an oldtime photo booth where you could get a strip of four shots for a quarter. After recovering selected slides by their labels, I would step outside and strike various poses, sometimes inspired by the titles. Later these black and white ‘selfies’ would be sorted then tinted,  painted, or collaged to complete the piece. The artwork you see in the Self Portraits gallery page grew out of this creative process.