About the Artists

Dorothy Simpson Krause

Krause earned a BFA in painting from Montevallo University in Alabama in 1957 and then went on to earn an MA and PhD in Art Education from the University of Alabama and The Pennsylvania State University. Though trained as a painter and arts educator, she rose to prominence as a printmaker and book artist.  Her work is in the collections of dozens of museums including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Academic museums and libraries, including those at Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Rutgers, have been particularly avid collectors of her works because of their utility as teaching objects. The University of Miami has more than 100 of her artist books and houses her archives.

"When this seminal work now housed at the Stanley Museum of Art was produced twenty years ago, Bonny, Karin and I worked with leading manufacturers to make art which combined traditional media and new digital technologies. Individually, and collectively as Digital Atelier, we pursued our passion, pushed boundaries, created unique work and shared our findings through presentations, publications and exhibitions. The Stanley Museum of Art, with both strong art and educational components, is the ideal institution for continuing to share the historical trajectory this exhibition represents. We look forward to being a part of those efforts."

Krause began working with computers in the late 1960s while completing her doctorate at Penn State. Early in her teaching career at the Massachusetts College of Arts, Krause was tasked with digitizing the college’s records. She further developed her programming skills through this work and built a partnership between the college and Iris Graphics in Bedford, MA. This collaboration allowed her and her students to curate exhibitions of digital artwork in Iris’s corporate collection and to print artwork on their machines. She then established the Computer Arts Center at MassArt, and through the Center developed a partnership with artists Bonny Lhotka and Karin Schminke, with whom she later created the Digital Atelier artists’ collaborative. Together, these three artists served as consultants helping to design the first printers specifically for art making. Their designs are still in use.

Krause is Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts College of Art and the author of Book + Art: Handcrafting Artists’ Books.  In 2004 she was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, in 2007 she was Von Hess Visiting Artist at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and in 2012 she was the first Helen M. Salzberg Artist in Residence at Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Since 2012 she has been Artist in Residence on Oceania Cruise Lines. 

Bonny Pierce Lhotka

Artist Bonny Lhotka explores and expands her creative vision through unique and varied materials and techniques, some of which she has yet to invent. (inventing as she goes) She leverages her roots as a painter, printmaker and photographer, layering images to create unique work.

As a pioneer in the digital era of fine art, Lhotka used photographs as a collage element in her work. She also worked with alternative photography -- manipulating and capturing light. This alternative photography has won her recognition and she brought the digital darkroom full circle, teaching workshops at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY – returning the art of the hand to the photographic print.

Bonny is sought out by inkjet and UV printer manufacturers to explore new applications for their equipment in the fine art world. By pioneering the use these industrial machines, she has given herself and her contemporaries access to sophisticated equipment that artists could otherwise only dream of affording. These industry relationships have enabled her to work at manufacturers sites on massive UV cured flatbed printers which use metallic, white and clear inks to achieve her artistic vision.

Bringing traditional printmaking and photographic processes into the digital age, she invented two transfer mediums which are now used by thousands of artists worldwide to transform their images. She has written three best-selling books on digital art and alternative photography: Digital Alchemy, The Last Layer and Hacking the Digital Print. In addition to her books, she has also produced an extensive selection of complimentary training videos which support a wide range of inkjet transfer products for artists that she developed. She offers workshops on the use of the products which are available online for purchase.

Her media explorations have resulted in a significant body of work. She has been commissioned by or has work included in over two hundred collections including Lucent Technologies, United Airlines, Johns Space Center, Jones Intercable, Microtek Labs, US Department of State, Charles Schwab, MCI, McDonnell Douglas and several American Embassies. 
 

"For the past 30 years, as we worked together as Digital Atelier, Karin, Dot, and I built on our individual strengths as we contributed to the collaboration. We each made distinctive work that showcased the potential of combining traditional and digital media and we complimented each other in our organizational skills. More importantly, we had a passion for what we did. The work in the Stanley, and the book that served as its catalog, are a testament to those strengths and that passion, which we hope will be evident to students, artists and researchers who view the work."

Karin Schminke 

Karin Schminke received her BA, MA, and MFA from the University of Iowa where she studied with Hu Hung-Shu in the Department of Art and Art History. Professor Hu inspired her deep and enduring interest in creative thinking, design, and their application to fine arts. Hu served as her thesis advisor and life-long mentor.  In the late 1970s, professor of dance David Sealey’s course, “Computing for the Fine Arts,” changed the trajectory of Schminke’s career. An innovative choreographer, Seeley taught BASIC programming in the course as it might be applied to the fine arts. For Schminke this course sparked a vision of the unlimited potential of digital tools for artists.

As a young professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire at the dawn of personal computing in the early 1980s, Schminke continued her exploration of the then rapidly developing field of digital graphics. With support from the University, she was able to explore her interest in combining traditional art media with digitally created imagery.

A decade later, Schminke met Dorothy Krause and Bonny Lhotka who were also experimenting in digital mixed media. Eventually they joined forces as the Digital Atelier to promote and develop the integration of digital technologies into artist’s studios. Together the trio advised companies manufacturing large format printers in the 1990s on design adjustments that would better facilitate fine art printing. With support from these manufacturers, they developed and popularized many new techniques, and documented these in their book, Digital Art Studio: Techniques for Combining Inkjet Printing with Traditional Art Materials, published by Watson-Guptill in 2004.

"I find it both personally significant and humbling that my work might serve future generations of students and scholars. Discovering the University of Iowa’s Museum of Art as an undergraduate was a transformative experience. The opportunity to study the works in the Museum’s collection inspired and guided me in countless ways. Revisiting the collection in later years reinforced the impact this collection has had upon my career. To now have my art in the Stanley Museum of Art’s collection with those works is incredibly meaningful to me."

As a leader in the exploration of integrating digital technologies with traditional art materials, Schminke’s art and processes have been written about in dozens of books and periodicals. She has given numerous workshops and presentations across the country.

Schminke’s art has been shown extensively both nationally and internationally. Commissions and collections of Schminke’s art appear in dozens of corporate and public spaces. She has participated as artist-in-residence at sites as diverse as Herman Miller, Inc., in Michigan, Littleton Studios in North Carolina, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC.