The Art Byte Critique art collective (the ABC Facebook page is update more frequently) is proud to present our first online project, The Screen and Beyond, planned and organized by Nick West and Yuka Otani featuring works by Caitlin Brutger, Beatrix Fife, Deanna Gabiga, Arthur Huang, Patty Hudak, Eva Li, yukaotani, and me, Michelle Zacharias.

The Screen and Beyond began as a project for a different online group under a different title but was later canceled as conditions changed. Instead of scrapping Nick West’s hard work, Yuka Otani resurrected it and used her graphic design skills to redesign it into a new online slide show, showing off the greatly varied talents of our group. The concept of the show is based on increased screen activity, both computer and television, during the global COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Screen‘ could also possibly include the ideas of filtering, windows, and many other definitions. That range in definition is reflected in the work submitted for this show. I myself submitted two series of sketches, each differing from the other and from my past work.

The first is a series of small circles sketched with crayons, coloured pencil, oil pastel, and possibly metallic paint in a black notebook. My digital camera did not like the matte black paper, so my apologies in advance for the poor photo quality. The actual circles are in the top third of the paper with the remaining space empty, but these images focus on the circles. I plan to include more and hopefully better photos in the portfolio section later. These circles were started as I healed and regained my physical strength after several surgeries and was unable to do anything more physically demanding. These circles began as an abstract way to express the colours of sunsets that depend on dust in the air to refract the light and create the beauty we see every night. The ones in this online show were specifically drawn to include references to screens, such as viewing sunsets through a screened window, with some becoming more geometric than colourful.

The second series of sketches is part of the larger body of work pertaining to the anthropocene with relation to aeolian dust, in other words the yellow dust blowing through Asia. With most of us spending more time in social isolation in our residences, our windows might be showing us the only glances of the outside world we see in a day. These rough sketches use paint created from the dust that blew through the screens and was collected in my apartment. The concept is good, so I think I might try refining these images in the future.

To see everyone’s work and the project as a whole, check out Art Byte Critique’s The Screen and Beyond.