ARTIST BIO

Ilana Zweschi is an artist working in Seattle, Washington. She attended Skidmore College, graduating summa cum laude in 2011, where she was an Art Major and a Mathematics Minor. In 2014 she earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the State University of New York at Albany and received the Departmental Thesis award for her oral defense. She is currently represented by Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle and is an instructor at Cornish College of the Arts. Zweschi has exhibited expansively, recently completing a large scale commission for the Facebook Open Arts Program. Notable group shows include: Tiger Strikes Asteroid in New York, Museum of Museums in Seattle, and Out of Sight: A Survey of Contemporary Art in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been published in the No. 145 Pacific Coast Issue of New American Paintings, a Youngspace interview, and 52 Critical Painters blog. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

“I write algorithms that transform written text into painterly actions. I input the raw data of the text into the algorithm, run it through a series of “if/then” rules I assign based on the structure and grammar of the written words, and receive an output of commands that drive the decisions of each brush stroke of paint. This painting combines two texts (in conjunction with one other dark painting), where one document determined the location and frequency of the white paint, and the other determined the location and frequency of the colored paint. If you follow the QR code you can see images of what I call the "algorithm byproducts". They are not the algorithms themselves, but instead what happens to the texts as I execute the algorithm. Each letter is associated with one brush stroke of paint and as I make that mark on the painting, I mark it off on the text as well.”