Thomas Hyatt Balto, Maryland
		Listen to this artist. (AU 80K)
		E-mail this artist at thyatt@mica.edu.

The computer has been my studio for the past three years. I still keep a sketchbook and journal but I make my art on the computer. Yet my work is not so much about the computer. I like objects and materials. I like the feel of things done by hand. So I try to find ways to get that feeling into my work. Its a paradox.

Lately, I have been scanning objects directly on my scanner bed, photographing them with the scanner as my camera. I like the quality of the image, the narrow depth of field, the odd flatness of the forms, the quick drop-off to darkness that the scanner light produces. I like how direct working on the computer is, how I am able to move objects in and out of my work, work on impulse, yield to whatever bits of inspiration visit me.

Someone asked me recently, when I was telling them about the problems I was having scraping fish scales off my scanner bed, they asked, "How can you scan a fish, don't you have to close the cover?" Well, you don't have to close the cover and you can scan an amazing variety of things and your scanner won't care very much. Pine needles, cut grass, water-soaked paper, eggs, pieces of concrete, painted sticks, my daughter's foot, the side of my face and almost every kind of leaf and flower from my garden have all found their way into my computer though my scanner. I've even dumped sand on scanner glass for a piece I'm working on about an underground house.

I make art about the things around me, about my wife and children, my days living in Spain, about old things that I find, about growing things. I like how the computer allows me to bring images from many sources together and make them feel part of a larger thing. The idea that I can pick up some writing from a ten-year old sketch book, lay it down on an old piece of wood that I found and float over this a gate made from a 3-D program is amazing to me. I like the marriage of text, of real objects and virtual objects. I like pushing the computer to be spiritual, to show emotion, to be a little loose and ragged. I don't know if I have done this yet but it is my goal as my art becomes more and more at home in this remarkable digital world.