Roz Dimon’s Matrix
Creating Multi-Sensory Art For the Web
 Elizabeth Fasolino |
(2/13/2008) If the first known artists, who painted in the caves of Lascaux in southwestern France nearly 18,000 years ago, were to come back to life in the 21st century, they could walk into any art supply store and be back to work in no time. Sure, there have been a few innovations since 15,000 B.C. — oil and acrylic paints, pencils, and Magik Markers, to name a few — but the basic enterprise of painting and drawing has remained the same: Smear some kind of pigment on some kind of surface in some more or less meaningful pattern, and call it art.
Roz Dimon, 54, a Shelter Island artist, is an exception. For the last 20 years she has been making art on a computer, and more recently has begun to work on an amazing new device called a Wacom tablet, which allows artists to draw and paint on their computer screens. She is one of a handful of early adapters who believes the tablet will become an increasingly popular way of synthesizing technology into the creative process. Only time will tell if artists will embrace the technology, or if the Wacom tablet will go the route of the Segway.
“I’m trying to connect the Web to the wall,” she said last month at her modest house, which, because it is built into a small hill, opens onto a surprising panorama of nearby woodland. “I plug in the way other people take out their charcoal.” Her digital paintings, which she calls “Dimonscapes,” are layered collages of information that are sourced and footnoted like a well-researched academic paper or an official biography.
“It’s taking complexity,” Ms. Dimon said, “and making it simple. We’re in an information world where people want to make sense of things. We’re on the cusp of a new age and it’s not enough to just express yourself anymore. It has to make sense. I’m ready to take things on. People write blogs. Are they writers? There are no rules anymore. I feel we need vehicles to navigate the plethora of visual images.”
Ms. Dimon also dresses in layers, wearing scarves and wraps with pants and high boots, while clicking through the Web for new information or reworking drawings on her computer screen. The walls of her studio are covered with photographs, drawings, and clippings in such profusion that the underlying Sheetrock is barely visible. She likes to free-associate at the drop of a hat, which isn’t as exhausting as it sounds, because she is conversationally almost self-sustaining. Her infatuation with all things technological keeps her inspired and inspiring.
Although many find information overload enervating, it energizes Ms. Dimon. “No matter how fast things go, it’s never fast enough for me,” she said with a laugh while drawing a calligraphic line across her Wacom tablet. “I’m going almost faster than I could with charcoal. The calligraphy can go from light to dark,” she said, deftly touching buttons to vary the line and intensity of the color.
“Madeline 16,” a foreshortened nude by Ms. Dimon, plays with the idea of depth on the computer screen while paying homage to the linear perspective perfected during the Renaissance. It also appropriates a motif from graphic design: a spangling of stars across the figure’s inner thigh. The drawing — which is loose and evocative, though made from only about a dozen lines — has lost none of the freshness that is so appealing in drawings done by confident artists with traditional pencils or charcoal.
In 1981, after graduating from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, Ms. Dimon moved to New York City from Atlanta, where she had grown up. She found work as a commercial artist and as a graphic designer for corporate clients. In the early 1990s, Mosaic, a prototype of today’s Web browsers, became available and Ms. Dimon shifted her creative energies to Web design. Soon afterward she began experimenting by “responding to the information age,” she said, “with a new brush: multimedia technology.”
“People who’ve studied my career,” Ms. Dimon said, “say that my drawings are the entry point. My teacher called my parents about my drawing when I was 6 years old. Being able to draw gave me an entry into a serious and beautiful art form. And once I started drawing with a Wacom, I never looked back.”
Dimonscapes, which have a patent pending, are the multilayered digital portraits that Ms. Dimon makes on commission. Although the word “Dimonscapes” sounds a bit more like a new product from the inventor of the Chop-o-Matic than a creative endeavor, they are strangely effective and moving compositions that can only be made and experienced online. A good example is “Pale Male: A Pilgrimage,” a portrait of the artist’s spiritual journey, which is on Ms. Dimon’s Web site, www.dimonscapes.com.
“After the dot-com bust,” Ms. Dimon said, explaining some of the disparate influences that went into its creation, “I was working at the World Trade Center. And 9/11 hit me pretty hard. There was a tremendous amount of intense feeling surrounding me. I went to a show of icons at the Metropolitan. The images of the Theotokos, or Madonna, were a source of comfort. I saw that my work wasn’t a comfort to anyone. Because I’d been emotionally pushed beyond the wall, I saw that the digerati had pulled back from a traditional role of art as a source of comfort, and I began to try and bring meaning to my feelings on a variety of layers.”
Her technique involves layering unique images; the result can be read like a photo album, or seen as a collage of the underlying pictures. The same could not be done with paint or by layering snapshots and swatches into a traditional collage. Like movies, which are best seen in a dark theater, Ms. Dimon’s portraits are made to be seen in a specific setting: online. She embraces the work of Marshall McLuhan, the influential media studies philosopher and guru of the Flower Power generation.
“I’m trying to delve into the layers of information with the Dimonscapes,” Ms. Dimon said. “ ‘The medium is the message,’ according to McLuhan. I take images and I bring them together, offering context that would otherwise be unavailable. Everything is footnoted, creating a new lexicon. It’s like the Guttenberg press, which made words available, but the novel gave them life.”
On Saturday there will be a show of her drawings at the Applied Arts Center School of Visual Arts in Amagansett, as well as a demonstration of computer drawing on a Wacom tablet between 4 and 6 p.m. Ms. Dimon will also hold a series of Wacom-sponsored drawing classes during the month of February. The schedule can be seen at www.appliedarts school.com.