Functional Cut

Chuck McCoy follows principles in design and color that are ingrained from his years in the graphic design world. He uses those principles in the fine art world, even though the lines between the graphic and fine art worlds are blurred he hopes to blur them even more.

Some things have become second nature to him, such as looking for a certain surface that you can only get from printing, whether it’s from a fine art press, an offset press or digital inkjet. He looks for spontaneous “accidents” in the process. Something that can move in an improvisational way and open up a new way of looking.

Looking is what he does as an artist. Observing the results, other’s artwork, and the world around him. All this influences his work. He has to think about how to create as his eyesight is diminished by macular degeneration and hopefully isn’t going to get worse. That’s one reason why he works with a computer. In addition to being a tool he uses well; it might help him to see better later on. Some of the visual elements in his work relate to that, but in an oblique way.

In "Functional Cut" he applied paint and paper on a maple panel, then had a fabricator inkjet print and cut the panel from a supplied file. McCoy creates elements directly in the computer, not scanned from previous work. Then he sanded down the inkjet to reveal underlying layers to his satisfaction and finished with more paint and wax.

Many thanks to Jeff Richards for his woodworking skills and to Schiller Reed for their fabricating skills.