Welcome to the Connecticut chapter of the Cult of Logo and "Thinking About Art About Thinking."

Thank you to Erin Riley and Zoe Hedstrom, without whom the show would not be possible. Erin approached me last year about having a solo exhibition, which just so happens to coincide with the end of the Luchsinger Gallery in this space: please remove the art before the building is demolished, Erin or Zoe. Zoe did much of the printing of these beautiful bits to atoms renditions of my TurtleArt. Erin helped me with the fabrication of the Dreamtime carvings, with which we pushed the limits of what the ShopBot is capable of doing, evidently, but we made lemonade from lemons and I think the finished pieces are quite dynamic and capture what I was trying to do with a fabrication of this particular code. Both Erin and Zoe curated the show, keeping the walls from looking like my dorm room sophomore year in college: let's just say they were overwhelming. All in all Erin and I met three times face to face and arranged rest through a combination of Google Drive, email, and text messages, showing that in today's pandemic compromised world that synchronous and asynchronous collaboration can work quite effectively, though I cherished my time working with Erin face to face more than Google Drive. Thank you also to Mark for the beautiful lighting, to the custodians of Greenwich Academy for helping prepare the space for us, and to the Administration and Trustees of Greenwich Academy for hosting this exhibit. I also want to acknowledge that we are using the ancestral land of the Leni Lenape people.

This work represents about ten years of my efforts at programming in Logo, specifically in a cute little program called TurtleArt. None of my early work is included here, not because I am embarrassed by it but rather because it lacks the technique that I have worked so hard to develop. The majority of pieces were programmed within the past five years, after I had one of those lightbulb moments during a conversation with Brian Silverman, who explained to me over breakfast the idea of thinking algorithmically: "[Thinking algorithmically is] learning how to express a sequence of things that express itself over time." With this knowledge I have worked to program code that is expressing a design over time in very effective, procedural ways that result in the art you see before you.

You will notice that the art is grouped into various themes. This is typically how I work with TurtleArt (and life in general): develop an idea and then bend that idea in as many directions as I can, typically in a short period of time, until the idea is fully worked out or I move on to the next hard fun. Working around the room, we have art built from rotation; art toying with an algorithm and trying to get the most saturated, crazy colors I could; tessellations and spirolaterals; the sun and the moon; scenes from Lopez Island, Washington, where I used to spend summers; and tiling designs. Additionally, the print above the show text is an homage to the Lionel-Groulx Metro station in Montreal not far from Brian and Artemis Papert's home. 

It is really amazing to be able to call myself an artist. During my middle age crazy I realized that much of what I was doing and felt most fulfilled by was making art. TurtleArt was a prominent medium in which I made art. I think it is testimony to the power of Brian and Paula Bonta's tool, TurtleArt, that I was able to develop as an artist through programming. First of all, the software is not intimidating: it is extremely easy to make a mark, as it were, and start building from there with serendipitous discoveries or concerted efforts. Additionally, it speaks volumes to the power of Logo programming that ten years after being introduced to Brian and TurtleArt that I continue to be inspired to program in it nearly daily, that I continue to develop as an artist and programmer using this lowly application, and that I have created a body of work that is worthy of an exhibition.

The exhibit's title, "Thinking About Art About Thinking" is a nod to Seymour Papert, one of the inventors of Logo. I hope this art makes you think about the math that was used to create it, the designs and patterns I have discovered in the world and thought, "That would make good TurtleArt," and the thinking that went into the design. Thank you for coming, have a snack, try out TurtleArt for yourself on the iPad mounted on the wall, and enjoy yourself and the art.