Artwork copyright Karen Guzak. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Red Ridge, 1987

Karen Guzak
American (born 1939)

Location: Hamblen Elementary, Spokane

About the Artwork

Red Ridge by artist Karen Guzak is an energetic abstract print based on computer-generated imagery. She describes the imagery as a "map from outer space where red earth meets a blue water's edge." She continues, "I felt immediately at home on the computer - the grid-based pixel system reminded me of my mother's weaving and at the same time of technical charts. I spent hours making drawings of forms found in nature that looked like tapestries or beaded works, and I used some of the drawings my father made of crystalline structures as a starting point for some of my computer drawings. I used my memories of places on the earth - where land and water meet and where mountains meet sky. I especially like images that play chaotic and random elements against the confining tension of geometric and ordered structures." Red Ridge is part of a suite of twelve lithograph prints by Guzak based on computer drawings. Each print uses 11 plates on average and features 28 or more colors. Guzak's process highlights how our use of computer-based designs and programs has evolved rapidly in the past thirty years: "I created the original computer drawings using a Florida Computer Graphics computer with 896 KB of memory, a 640x480 CRT monitor, 70 MB Winchester hard drive, two 512 KB floppies, and a Tektronix 4695 color inkjet printer. The software is IBIS, a color-graphics illustration system... I drew on a digitizing tablet with an electronic stylus and spent from 4 to 12 hours completing a drawing... I modified the inkjet prints both by computer command and by hand manipulation and had four or five photographically enlarged negatives made for each print." She created 134 lithography plates from the negatives.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Spokane Public Schools.

About the Artist

Karen Guzak runs an artist studio in Snohomish, AngelArmWorks, renovated from a historic church. She has taught art at Seattle Pacific University and acted as president of the board of Artist Trust. She has committed herself to art, public service, and yoga.