Assistant professor of print media Travess Smalley uses digital and physical tools to create striking images and to help his students expand their creative horizons.
“Pixel Rug”
By Travess Smalley, Assistant Professor of Print Media
2023
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Travess Smalley is a digital artist and assistant professor of print media in URI’s Department of Art and Art History. He creates digital art, including images, prints, and animation, incorporating alternative processing methods to produce unimaginable, emergent images.
“Electronics, servers, motors, and processors are everywhere in my crowded studio,” says Smalley, whose description of his studio reveals an affinity for both the digital medium he works in, and for nature and the analog world. “Ethernet cables descend out of the ceiling like vines. Near the crackle of the fireplace and the hum of the stereo, small motors spin and set off a chain of actions resulting in a ballpoint pen tracing bitmap paths on cardstock. The pen draws a pixel grid, which is overlaid and abstracted into a complicated, repeating pattern. The grid looks like a woven rug or a computer chip.”
As an educator, Smalley aims to help his students express their unique lived experiences. His teaching philosophy, he says, is also grounded in challenging students to use software and technology in ways that are counter to the intended uses of the tools.
For example, one of his in-class assignments involves recreating paintings using Microsoft Word. The students, says Smalley, “have to bend the word processor to generate new models of pictorialization. The assignment pushes them against the limits of software that is not necessarily designed for creative complexity or adaptability.”
“My wish,” says Smalley, “is to instill in students a lifelong curiosity about art and design, while also encouraging them to have confidence to create new works, ideas, and movements.”
—Barbara Caron
Smalley’s artwork has been featured in ARTnews, 4Columns, Forbes, It’s Nice That, Outland, Rhizome, and more. He has exhibited globally in physical and digital spaces, with recent solo exhibitions through Foxy Production in New York, and on a Minecraft server hosted by Ender Gallery and MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.