‘Little Pill Buddha’
24” x 36” / 2003 / Digital print on 80lb. matte heavy weight
paper / Hand-signed / Open edition
$49 + s/h

AN INTERVIEW WITH TODD SCALISE

PMC: Tell me about your current
print series.

TS: I recently finished a 5-year series
of paintings and drawings entitled
‘New Millennia’.  These compositions
are commentaries on recent world
events, early American history, and
'images of power'.  Many of the
paintings are diagrammatic and
somewhat symmetrical in nature
giving them the presence of synthetic
modern-day icons.  Not long after I
finished the paintings, I began this
print series as a way to further explore
this new body of imagery.

Some of these digital images
existed in previous forms, such as
the sketches of the Buddha or the
Millennium Man drawings and
paintings, and now they are being
assimilated into an amalgam of
digitized prints. Tell me about your
work process and why you decided
to go in this direction with your work.

I started to work with digital media
because it allowed me to elaborate
on my paintings without overworking
the originals.  I began by integrating
large scans of pharmaceutical pills
into digitized images of my paintings.  
The pills were the first photographic
element to enter the work and then I
moved to 35mm photography to
capture shots from the television.  
After a while, I realized I could find
almost anything I wanted off of the
Internet and my work became a pure
game of ‘pick and choose
aesthetics’.  To balance all of this, I
integrated scans of my sketchbook,
an array of apocalyptic ballpoint pen
drawings and loose thoughts that
would never see the light of day in any
other way that I make art.  
‘Pixels+Pills+Paint’ is the first 10
images from my print series.  

>> continue