Artists’ Statement:
Current work explores the relationships that develop between everyday objects of comfort and popular culture interferences. Influences are heavily drawn from contemporary and modern printmakers such as Richard Hamilton and Paula Rego. Interests lie in the ideals of Romanticism - exploration of unique moments and personal emotion through the use of shape and colour. Unique surfaces are explored through print - specifically CMYK rip software (screenprint, photopolymer etching, laser woodblock), halftone structures and manipulations of those patterns / angles to achieve controllable photographic to distorted variants. The digital glitch present through Adobe software programs drives forward the question of technologies place and developing role in traditional processes. In particular, focus has been on melding traditional woodcut with laser woodcut variants, exploring MDF vs, plywood and plexiglass matrices. TroTech and Epilogue lasers offer different focal lenses that achieve a wide spectrum of refinement with unique surfaces. Environmentally friendly substitutes, photopolymer plates, and the ‘pushing’ of print possibilities through advancements in other mediums, is a constant drive to produce and exhibit.
Brief Bio: Myles Calvert was born in Collingwood, Ontario (Canada). He attended the University of Guelph with a focus in printmaking and art history, before travelling to London, UK where he completed his MA in Printmaking at Camberwell College of Art (University for the Arts, London). Major bodies of work included mass installations of screen printed toast and the idolization of popular British celebrity culture. During this time he worked for the National Portrait Gallery at Trafalgar Square before moving to Hastings in East Sussex to teach printmaking at Sussex Coast College and become Duty Manager of the newly built Jerwood Gallery (contemporary to modern British art). Toast continued with a 43000 slice installation during the Queen’s ‘Diamond Jubilee’ with college students, drawing BBC media attention and culminated in two solo exhibitions before making a return to the University of Guelph to teach Advanced and Experimental Printmaking. Myles is currently a Visiting Professor in Expanded Print Media at Alfred University, New York State College of Ceramics and a Sessional Instructor at OCADU (Ontario College of Arts and Design University) in Toronto.
For more work and information about the artist visit: http://www.squirrelpigeonfish.com/