Five years ago, in an interview with the Deseret News, artist Anna Campbell Bliss opined, "Boundaries are artificial. Often the most exciting ideas emerge at the intersection where more than one discipline meet."
Starting today, visitors to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts can experience and — if they take the time — understand exactly what Bliss meant. Her 40-year retrospective, "Intersections: The Art of Anna Campbell Bliss," stretches and stuns the imagination with expertly crafted art that intersects science, culture and history.
The exhibit is composed of Bliss' art from the time she moved to Salt Lake City in 1963 to recent site-specific work. Influenced by Euclidean geometry, Josef Albers' color theory, modern dance, Islamic calligraphy, water, Buckminster Fuller doodling, Navajo rugs, DNA and RNA, 13th-century illuminated manuscripts and just about anything else known to man, Bliss' exhibition pieces collide pleasurably with the eye: Color, line, positive and negative space, implied texture and movement all tantalize. Then, without any conscious effort on the viewers' part, the images meld into a cohesive design.
"I had to be somewhat selective concerning the pieces for the retrospective," Bliss said. "I tried to put the emphasis on the major areas: some sources of inspiration, the development of the color and then the site-specific work."
The beginning spaces of the exhibit allow her early color experiments, "Spectrum Study V" (1978) and "Spectrum Study VI" (1978), to strut with marvelous self-confidence. "The early prints particularly show the basic experimentation in color, mostly geometric," she said. "Then the prints move into a very free, experimental period. And then I move onto the computer."
Her "Nightshade II" (1993), where the artist employed cellophane for texture, is her best example of experimentation; the organic quality of the piece intrigues the eye.
Also in the prints area of the exhibition, visitors will encounter — side by side — "Chan Chan" (seven color screen print, 1981), Bliss' last B.C. (Before Computer) print, and "Mirage" (screenprint with airbrush, 1985) her first print to incorporate technology.
As scintillating as Bliss' use of color is, it is her love affair with the computer (generating algorithmic, rule-based art) that has produced the most exquisite and intelligent offspring: Viewers will see studies as well as completed works that span nearly 30 years.
In 1989 she was hired to do a mural about data processing for the state Capitol building. Bliss designed the mural on the computer and then merged the algorithmic result with her manual art skills, creating "Windows."
Her next large computer-assisted mural was "Discoverers," produced for the Salt Lake Airport in 1996.
Bliss' most extensive and image-packed mural is "Extended Vision," (2001-03) commissioned by the University of Utah for the Cowles Mathematics Building. This collection of screened aluminum plates is the piece de resistance of her oeuvre. (Half-size printed examples of Bliss' murals are included in the exhibition.)
Yet, after decades of extensively combining her ideas with the computer, Bliss now wants more freedom. "I don't feel completely dependent on the computer," she said. "I want to re-combine the many sources of inspiration for my work. The hand and painting, and whatnot, is just as important as what the computer does."
According to Bliss, there is a momentum that "develops with the computer — partly it's political and partly it's financial — that it's the answer to all problems, to all things. What it loses is never considered."
"I think children growing up with an overexposure to the computer, and to television, is detrimental to their development. The computer should be one part, but they still have to have contact with nature, that direct experience of life. Achieving this balance is important."
Bliss can be taken at her word: After the retrospective, she and her husband plan to visit Italy for an extended period to soak up the art and beauty of the country.
In the exhibition catalog's enlightening essay piece, Katherine M. Nelson recounts a story of a Japanese architect/scientist who visited Bliss' studio. After studying his surroundings, he told the artist her work was "Shin Gyo So."
"Shin" is the formal structure.
"Gyo" is variation within the structure.
"So" is the touch that disturbs both Shin and Gyo.
The studio visitor had it right: You cannot define Bliss, or her intersections, any better.
And so the artist comes full circle, and her journey — "Intersections: The Art of Anna Campbell Bliss" — is to be studied and savored for its notable craftsmanship and its intelligent mingling of art and science.
If you go
What: "Intersections: The Art of Anna Campbell Bliss"
Where: Utah Museum of Fine Arts
When: Today through Aug. 3
How much: $4 adults, $2 seniors and youths (6-18)
Phone: 581-7332
Also
What: Lecture by author and art critic Katherine M. Nelson
When: Today, 4 p.m.
E-mail: gag@desnews.com