Bio: Myles Calvert was born in Collingwood, Ontario. He attended the University of Guelph with a focus on printmaking, before traveling to London, UK where he completed his MA in Printmaking, at Camberwell College of Art (University for the Arts, London). During this time, he worked for the National Portrait Gallery before moving to Hastings in East Sussex, to teach printmaking at Sussex Coast College (now East Sussex College) and become the Duty Manager of the newly established Jerwood Gallery (now Hastings Contemporary).

Four formative years were spent as a Visiting Professor in Expanded Media at Alfred University and Alfred State College of Technology, teaching across print-based mediums including core foundations programs, senior advising, and graduate mentorship. Four additional years were spent at Winthrop University within the Department of Fine Arts as an Associate Professor with a focus on printmaking and foundations courses.

Recent residencies include Art Print Residence (Barcelona, Spain) and Proyecto’ace (Buenos Aires, Argentina), a lecture/workshop at PUCP (Pontificia Universidad Catòlica del Perú) in Lima, the Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, NM), and the McColl Center (Charlotte, NC). Myles is currently the Director of the IEA (Institute for Electronic Arts) at Alfred University, New York.

Artist Statement: My current work explores the conversations that develop between everyday objects of comfort and colour theory. Ideas navigate the spectrum from utilitarian forms through to the absurdly escalated and opulent. This notion of comfort often escalates to desire and an inherent, materialistic obsession to acquire and adorn. The chosen focal objects have been universal, recognizable and at times, mundane. I question why they must be objects at all, when the broad subject of landscape should also be challenged.

My influences are drawn from printmakers such as Richard Hamilton, Patrick Caulfield, and Josef Albers, but also contemporary painters, designers, and digital artists who exceptionally manipulate colour (Flavia da Rin, Anish Kapoor, Mario Testino).

Interests are rooted in the ideals of Romanticism — exploration of unique moments and personal emotion through the use of identifiable shape and colour variants. Unique surfaces are explored through print specifically, halftone structures and manipulations of those patterns / angles to achieve controllable photographic to distorted variants.

The digital glitch, present through Adobe software programs, drives forward the question of technologies’ place and developing role in traditional processes. In particular, focus has been on melding traditional woodcut with laser woodcut variants, exploring MDF vs, plywood and plexiglass matrices.

Website: squirrelpigeonfish.com

Social Media: @squirrelpigeonfish