Lucy Petrovich
“In the 1980s, if you worked on the computer to create any kind of imaging or artwork, you learned to experiment; the field was wide open. There was so much to invent at that time with software and hardware. Meeting women who were successful exhibiting their work helped me to pursue this field and continue with it today.”
The Art of Science, Architecture & Chicago Imagists: Selected Works, 1987–2017. Courtesy of Ellen Sandor.
From New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts.
Post-Recording: Untold HERstories: An Homage to SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH ‘19 LA, July 31, 2019
Lucy Petrovic is a new media artist, educator and researcher. She received her MFA in 1985 from EVL where she created digital videos and programming a prototype of a remote design tool where two people at two different computers created animations together using references from traditional animation, via modem– predating the Internet.
She was a computer graphics technician at Video Image in Los Angeles creating graphics for Max Headroom and the Walt Disney movie, Earth Star Voyager. She explored VR and taught at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and is a past Dean of Graduate Studies for Egg Story Digital Arts School in Singapore, and past Associate Professor, University of Texas at Dallas. She contributed to ISEA, Prix ARS Electronica and the ACM SIGGRAPH International Computer Graphics Conference, as Chair of the Exhibition of Computer Art in 1988 and Electronic Theater Co-chair in 1994. Her interactive immersive environments have been exhibited internationally at the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery Global Eyes, Museum of Estonian Architecture (with ISEA) Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and Tucson Museum of Art.
“One of my professors was Beaumont Newhall, who wrote the book on The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present. Some of the earlier photographers I admired included Edward Weston and Alfred Stieglitz.”
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–Lucy Petrovich
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in San Francisco, c. 1930, Edward Weston
4”x3” Vintage gelatin silver print
From the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection, Digital photograph by James Prinz Photography
