Edward Boilini
My small-town Indiana childhood in an Italian family of artists, business professionals, and innovative thinkers provided the ideal incubation for my passion, vision and career as a visual artist. I was a local boy with a global world view immersed in a creative atmosphere where artistic expression was as familiar as laughing with my brothers. My early interest in/ fascination with photography and motion picture film, developed into an obsession with the integration of my art with emerging visual technologies. My subject matter has included broad reflections and critiques of society from abstract art to education to social justice. More recently, I have integrated language and linguistic symbols in my work, striving to utilize but not be dependent upon them. My aspiration is to merge different skills into electronic images, creating genuinely new media, that have roots based squarely in traditional art forms. For me, regardless of the media, composition remains critical.
BACKGROUND
My grandfather was a mold maker and sculptor. I spent hours on his knee while he worked, learning what negative space was probably before I knew the alphabet. My father, an immensely practical man, practiced photographic documentation – still and motion pictures – often allowing me to use his equipment. My older sister was a professional dancer, who studied under the legendary Merce Cunningham. Thanks to my mother, my closet became a darkroom. I finally felt I could use the photographic medium to express myself when I acquired a 35mm SLR (Single Lens Reflex), and began to bulk load my own Tri-X black and white film.
At Indiana University, my ideas of art and photography were challenged, startled, and expanded by photographer Henry Holmes Smith, notably by his later abstract work which was created without a camera. While employed at a cable television station, I learned the value and power of video for social change by assisting a local non- profit organization, working to fight poverty in the community, to produce training programs for use in small format video equipment. While teaching at Butler University, I worked in the field of instructional technology, that included computer graphics, animation and digital video. My work at Butler allowed me to collaborate with community organizations, scientists, and artists using creative visualization to produce electronic communications. At Butler, I served as beta site for the development of Apple Computer’s QuickTime Media technology. After Butler, I taught Visual Research in Video and Computers at Herron School of Art. Most recently, I have worked as an independent contractor and artist.
COLLABORATIONS
• VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America)
• Indianapolis Public Schools
• Community Action Against Poverty
• The Indiana Arts Commission
• The Indianapolis Arts Council
• Holcomb Research Institute
• The Center for New Television
• The American Film Institute
• AT&T Graphic Software Labs
• Apple Computer Corporation
EDUCATION
A.B. Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
M.S. in Education, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana
“Without question, the evolution of the World Wide Web has enhanced opportunities to address audiences globally. One of my goals, or one of my overriding concerns is to be able to create work that will will work in other cultures or to be equally understood or misunderstood anywhere on the planet and not have it dependent upon language, utilized language and linguistic symbols, but not have it dependent on any one language.”
Quote from interview as part of “Reel Time” PBS Television Program 1990