Visual Metaphors - The Artwork of Reese Schroeder
liquidoranges STUDIO
Reese Schroeder, liquidoranges STUDIO
Growing up in the 1960’s I was introduced to electronic music, an artform created by human composers and produced through emerging electronic technologies. My father, a professor of music theory and composition and resident composer in our city, had me engrossed in his exploration in using machines to create art. His experimentation with pure synthesized sound, generated through electrical signals, amplified, phase shifted, wave manipulated segments of audio without the use of any known ancient or modern physical analog instrumentation was exhilarating. I was transfixed by what he did during that period, but the moment of transformation of my life’s trajectory was when he invited composer Morton Subotnick to the college for the annual Contemporary Music Festival in 1978. Mr. Subotnick had composed “Silver Apples of the Moon”, and “Wild Bull” among many other works. My introduction to and days spent as a teenager with Mr. Subotnick changed my outlook on creativity. Forever. Mr. Subotnick assembled an experiential room at my father’s college, reactive to our movements as we passed through, with electronic sound and visual imagery.
I saw the future of art. A technology art.
From 1965 through 1977, I spent summers studying music and art at the National Music Camp (NMC), Interlochen, Michigan, where my parents both taught. My interest in pushing visual boundaries led me to complete my study of architecture at Texas Tech University, where I tested my belief in merging art with architecture, while studying art and film in addition to the core curriculum. My architectural thesis was selected to represent the university for their annual review by the National Architectural Accreditation Board. In 1988 I was asked by a client to create an artwork for the lobby of a downtown Boston building I had renovated and I laid out the overall idea of a 3-dimensional bronze sculpture on a Macintosh computer. Recognized early in 1996 for my New Media digital works by The University of Texas at Dallas, I gave a dedicatory talk at the opening of UTD’s New Media Arts Lab. The following year, I was invited to the Board of Advisors for New Media at UTD. In 2005, I presented on a panel at the National American Institute of Architects convention in Las Vegas on media and its influences with architects. In 2008, I stepped down from my position as Principal Architect for a fifty-person architectural firm in Boston to open liquidoranges STUDIO. My original vision was to integrate art with architecture through product design with art rugs, art tableware, and architectural art glass.
I developed a process for working with traditional weavers to create hand-tufted New Media art rugs. I was invited to be a keynote speaker at DomoTex Middle East in 2009 in Dubai, UAE, where I presented my processes for creating artworks on the computer, conveying to weavers around the world the essence, detail, and soul of my art as woven into art rugs. My work in digital glazing fine bone china from my digital artwork files produced four prototypes that premiered in Atlanta in 2010 at the AmericasMart show. And, working with an evolving laminated glass process, I began incorporating artworks into architectural art glass.
Since retirement from architecture in 2021, I devote my creative life as a full time digital painter taking all that I know towards producing fine art canvases, archival pigment-signed museum prints, art glass, and as dye-sublimation on aluminum. My artworks are on display in public and private collections, and I continue to submit new works to juried exhibitions and artist shows.