Multimedia artist Philip Mallory Jones hasn't only made art his life's work ' he's made his life his artwork.
Jones' multimedia exhibit, In the Sweet Bye & Bye: Old Songs and New Work will be featured in the Multicultural Programs Art Gallery. The exhibit, which runs until May 4, encompasses several forms of media, including literature, visual and digital art.
Through his use of poetry, narrative, digital artwork and immersive visual environments, Jones has created what he refers to as a dialogue between traditional and contemporary creative and cultural practice
according to a news release.
Jones incorporates literature, photos and stories from his life into his original works, which he describes as a personal memoir of sorts. He creates digital paintings from his mementos and enhances them through the use of his self-taught computer skills. These paintings were printed and matted for exhibition in the installation.
Accompanying Jones's original works are poems and narrative texts by his mother, poet/novelist Dorothy Mallory Jones. The duo has collaborated together for over 30 years. The exhibit is primarily a memoir, combining personal family anecdotes, communal folklore and artistic allegories, Jones said.
The exhibit is available through three presentation modes: the gallery installation, the exhibit in the SecondLife.com virtual world and a portfolio-bound book. The exhibit has taken about two years to get to this point and has another estimated 18 months in development, he said.
Jones has been working in various media forms since 1969 and began working with digital media in 1990. His most recent digital endeavor takes place in the virtual world known as SecondLife.com. Second Life is an online community in which Ohio University has its own digital campus that houses his digital exhibit.
In the interactive version of Jones' exhibit, a person's custom avatar ' his or her online alter ego ' can view the online exhibit he or she would see in the actual installation. Jones hopes to eventually make the online exhibit more interactive by enabling people's avatars to actually enter his digital paintings.
The way I work is as if I have feet in two different worlds Jones said. One is very traditional and looking back at what humans have been doing for thousands of years. The other is cutting edge technologies and new forms and the frontier of investigating what new media capabilities can do.
The cutting-edge technology of Second Life has enabled Jones's work and the work of many others to be viewed by a wider audience. Classes from Duke University and University of California, Berkeley are among several that have toured the exhibit through the Web site, he said.
I really try to keep what I'm doing in new media grounded in human experience and tradition and forms and ways of thinking that have been going on for a very long time he said.
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Kathleen Keish
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