February 17–24, 2000

cover story

Multi Man

	photo: Michael LeGrand

Nexus to Talk, from steeltown to academia: The multifaceted multimedia career of UArts wunderkind Chris Garvin, who’s narrowing the gap between digital design and high art.

by Jen Darr

Nine stationary images are projected onto the gallery walls from warm, humming slide projectors on the floor. The images, mostly black and white with a smattering of red, are almost cartoonlike in their simplicity: a factory billowing neat white clouds of smoke, a drop of blood with a cross in the middle, a beaker, a bucket, a pile of bricks. And there’s one photograph: a large black-and-white close-up of a man in his 60s.

The simplicity of it is perplexing at first. Since it’s the work of a multimedia designer with national credits, a young man who’s also director of a major new program at the University of the Arts, you expect something, well, more flashy.

But the simplicity is deceptive. Jackie Nice Guy, the title of this installation at Old City’s Nexus gallery, packs a lifetime of experience into those unprepossessing icons. The piece is a kind of bridge between the blue-collar world of the artist’s bricklayer father and the high-tech milieu of his son, telling a flesh-and-blood story in the coolly utilitarian language of computer technology.

Chris Garvin’s life is rich in such dichotomies.

He first studied engineering, switched, ended up with a master’s in painting — and now he makes his art on computers.

He spends half his week in New York City’s high-powered design world, creating Web sites for such illustrious clients as Talk magazine and MoMA. The other half he’s immersed in the education of young Philadelphia artists. And at 29, he is one of the youngest directors of a university academic department in the country.

But whatever he’s doing, he is still fulfilling his goal as an artist: to communicate.

And in the fast-changing multimedia art world, careers like Garvin’s are becoming the norm.

Flash Points

There’s not a trace of wear and tear on Chris Garvin’s youthful round face. With his dark blue jeans and stylish black shoes, close-cropped pate and blonde goatee, the stocky assistant professor almost looks like a student. The only hints of academia are his crisp white button-down shirt and the nameplate outside his office door at the University of the Arts that reads "Chris Garvin: director."

Inside, his office doesn’t seem all that professorial either. Oddly shaped pieces of bubble wrap dot the wall near a framed cartoon of the Spice Girls and a huge poster of a nurse happily giving an injection.

Clearly, this is not a traditional academic department, nor even a traditional art school department. There’s not a splatter on the bright white walls, not a whiff of oil paint. Instead, the desks are scattered with fruity-hued iMacs and the air is tinged with that hot plasticky computer smell.

Like many art schools around the country, the University of the Arts realized during the last decade that it had to respond to advances in technology and the ubiquity of the Internet. But those who were formulating the curricula had no models to follow and kept coming back to the same dilemma: Is it "art leads, commerce follows"? The other way around? Somewhere in between?

That’s where Garvin came in.

As an engineering undergrad at the State University of New York at Buffalo in the early ’90s, he switched to art after a photography class got him hooked. Then, studying painting in Ohio State University’s master’s program, he rejoiced in the options that technology offered him as an artist. He shifted from working with traditional materials such as oils to using projections and light.

"Computing was still pretty new, to the point where there was this sense of awe. There was nothing there, just light on a wall."

Yet there was a link, he found, between old and new media.

"I was still painting, there were still the same kind of ideas, the same processes were working."

No one questioned how he did it, or what materials he used.

Previously, when he was painting, "it was tough for me to have a conversation about my work that didn’t deal with ‘How did you do this? What strokes did you use? What recipe did you use for your oils? Is this linen or canvas?’"

But with his multimedia work, "it was wonderful because people didn’t want to talk about how I was doing it. The idea of craftsmanship in the digital era was kind of a misnomer," he says.

Today, he says, it’s come full circle.

"If you do something digital, they say, ‘Oh, how’d you do that? Did you use Flash?’ People want to talk about this because technology has saturated our lives."

That saturation — the inevitability of computers as artistic tools — led to the formation of UArts’ multimedia program in 1997.

"We believe [multimedia] has grown into a discipline in and of itself, with its own aesthetic and content issues that developed in conjunction with the technology," says UArts’ provost Virginia Red, who’s also acting dean of the College of Media and Communications, in which the multimedia program is included.

Garvin was selected to head up the program because "he’s an active professional in the field," Red says.

However, the idea of setting up a separate multimedia department wasn’t very popular initially at the university, says Garvin.

He believes he has changed a few minds.

"I think in general they respect what I am doing and believe that I am trying to do something that has the rigor this institution stands for.

"Do they all understand it?" he asks. "The question is, do they all want to? They don’t want art to change. It doesn’t need to, it’s been fine for hundreds and hundreds of years."

 

The Digital Divide

Image from a 1996 installation titled "Information Overload = Pattern Recognition."

But art is changing. Even schools like the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which is steeped in tradition, are exploring technology. PAFA recently sent out a survey to all its students, and to people who inquired about the school but did not apply, asking, among other questions, if they believe the academy should offer electronic media as a major or minor. Survey results, which should be in by April, will influence any decision PAFA makes to expand its offerings.

One sign that multimedia has earned legitimacy as an art form is the new lexicon that’s forming. Like painters and sculptors, multimedia artists now speak their own language. (See sidebar.)

Some schools, such as the San Francisco Art Institute, place the emphasis on fine arts in their multimedia programs.

"The same question kept coming up: How could digital media be applied to art without compromising it or bringing in any of the heavy design or industrial aspects?" says Paul Klein, coordinator of SFAI’s Center for Digital Media.

And although the San Francisco Art Institute chose not to offer multimedia as a major, Klein understands why some schools do. It’s much easier for a school to raise money with a bevy of financially successful alumni, he points out, and parents are more likely to pay tuition to a school that places importance on teaching marketable skills.

Moore College of Art and Design has added multimedia courses to its graphic design department, but has no intention — at least not now — of creating a separate department.

"It’s been difficult integrating [multimedia] and keeping the integrity of the department in terms of design principles," says Gigi McGee, chair of Moore’s graphic design department. "We had no choice but to do that because that’s what the marketplace demands."

Last year, when Garvin took over as director of UArts’ multimedia program, his first priority was redesigning the curriculum. When he came on, the program was industry-focused. He sought to create a balance.

"We’re making young artists and designers who think about the social and conceptual consequences of what they are making. And they also are craftsmen — very few multimedia programs out there do [both]," he says.

"They’re either conceptual programs — what it means to be on the Web, how it empowers people," he says in a deliberately lofty tone, "or there are vocational programs that teach people how to use software — ‘This is how you’re going to do it so you can get a job.’"

When he came on, he says less than 20 percent of art schools in the country had multimedia as a major. (Currently, he points out, the Rochester Institute of Technology is the only school with a program similar to his.)

He notes one class in particular, Visual Concepts, which students are required to take early on.

Previously, he says, the class focused on industry-standard software such as Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator — which will someday be obsolete, he says.

"So you’re only as good as the software engineer at Adobe."

He believes students should learn what Photoshop is meant to do. He teaches them dodging and burning, painting and drawing, form, line, mass and color — all on a computer. These are the basics any art student must be well versed in, no matter what software they use.

"This becomes our studio, and our paintbrush, and our gallery," he says, pointing to his Blueberry iMac, which almost matches the color of his eyes.

part 2