My imagery expresses an aesthetic based on the human image as shaped by, and reflecting, our digital age: a digital age that attempts to dissolve the distinction between the virtual and the corporal. I combine a hybrid of photography, traditional and digital printmaking techniques to produce seductive surfaces that illustrate the tension between the technological sublime and the removal of real physical experience. Inspirations for my work can be traced to works of science fiction by authors such as Philip K Dick and Ray Bradbury, themes from Cyberpunk and Steampunk worlds, along with the musical movements of Industrial rock/metal.
I explore these themes by creating mostly figurative works that are constructed through layers of large-format digital imaging, screen printing, drawing, and painting that are often surfaced with pigmented urethane resins, beeswax or polymer. The surface is sometimes hand-inscribed and screen-printed with design work. The end result is layers of embedded information that merge its language with the human figure both visually and physically, creating work that mimics the look of a digitally-processed image on a surface with immediate sensuous physicality on a human scale. This process replicates the feeling and richness of a computer screen, while allowing me to physically rework the surface by hand.
In Summer 2007 I embarked on a collaborative effort with University of Pittsburgh professor Lenore Thomas during a residency at Anchor Graphics at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois. This new effort, Satan’s Camaro, is a fresh contemporary approach to innovative printmaking methods and imagery that combines screen printing, mixed-medium techniques and other unique processes. See this work on the links page.
BIO: Justin Strom received a BFA in Painting at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri in 1998 and his MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. He has worked as an Assistant Printer at Highpoint Editions in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Production Assistant at Tandem Press in Madison, Wisconsin. His mixed media work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Currently, Justin Strom is an Assistant Professor of Printmaking and Digital Imaging at the University of Maryland- College Park.
I explore these themes by creating mostly figurative works that are constructed through layers of large-format digital imaging, screen printing, drawing, and painting that are often surfaced with pigmented urethane resins, beeswax or polymer. The surface is sometimes hand-inscribed and screen-printed with design work. The end result is layers of embedded information that merge its language with the human figure both visually and physically, creating work that mimics the look of a digitally-processed image on a surface with immediate sensuous physicality on a human scale. This process replicates the feeling and richness of a computer screen, while allowing me to physically rework the surface by hand.
In Summer 2007 I embarked on a collaborative effort with University of Pittsburgh professor Lenore Thomas during a residency at Anchor Graphics at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois. This new effort, Satan’s Camaro, is a fresh contemporary approach to innovative printmaking methods and imagery that combines screen printing, mixed-medium techniques and other unique processes. See this work on the links page.
BIO: Justin Strom received a BFA in Painting at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri in 1998 and his MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. He has worked as an Assistant Printer at Highpoint Editions in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Production Assistant at Tandem Press in Madison, Wisconsin. His mixed media work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Currently, Justin Strom is an Assistant Professor of Printmaking and Digital Imaging at the University of Maryland- College Park.
