http://www.thetimesnews.com/articles/art_3634___article.html/conally_fractal.html
Fractal fanatic: computer, imagination combine for interesting art
By JEFF WIRICK/Times-News
July 5
Artist Tom Conally poses with some of his fractal art pieces, now on
display in the Isabella Cannon Room at Elon University. The exhibit will
hang through July.
Sam Roberts/Times-News
Artist Tom Conally poses with some of his fractal art pieces, now on
display in the Isabella Cannon Room at Elon University. The exhibit will
hang through July.
ELON — Tom Conally proves you don’t need paint, canvas or brushes to
produce interesting art. His alternative tools consist of a computer
program, a printer and a vivid imagination.
The Elon resident has received a positive reception from his 60-piece
exhibit of fractal art, which is on display at the Isabella Cannon Room
in the Center for the Arts at Elon University.
It will remain on display until the end of July.
The pieces seem to be going quickly, though. Sixteen already had “sold”
signs on them as of last Thursday.
Fractal art is made by calculating fractal objects and displaying them
as still images, animations or music.
“It’s basically a (math) equation plotted out by a computer,” Conally
said.
Actually, it’s a little more than that, as Conally later explained. He
creates his works on a computer, adds color, prints them out and then
frames them.
The computer program Conally uses — there are more than 100 programs
that can help produce fractal art — comes with hundreds of formulas and
a place to plot coordinates. Change the parameters of the equation and
you change the shape of the displayed images.
Conally tinkers with different equations to create his art. Adding color
combinations, he said, “makes it snap a little better.”
One thing Conally said he doesn’t mess with is the math.
“My interest in this is more art than math,” the 1967 Elon College grad
said. “I have a minor in math, but I could never handle the math that it
takes to do these. I let the computer do that.
“It’s a blank box. I plug in the formula, I tell it what parameters to
use, it changes the parameters and it shows me what it has. If I don’t
like it, I change it again.”
CONALLY HAS TAUGHT chemistry for more than 20 years — first at High
Point College, then at Alamance Community College. But he has always
found time to develop his artistic side.
“I’m just very curious,” he said. “I get into a lot of stuff. (Fractal
art) just happens to be one of those things that I’ve become passionate
about.”
Through the years, Conally’s passions have included everything from
photography to Origami. He also made and sold boomerangs until recently.
Wife Faye Conally said Tom’s artistic side emerged early in their
43-year-old marriage when he decided to cover a bare wall in their house
by making an acrylic painting.
Fractal art didn’t become an obsession to Conally until the last decade
or so. He still uses an older computer program, FracTint, to create most
of his pieces.
“I would advise (anyone interested in making fractal art) to get a
Windows program because the FracTint program is so old,” he said. “I’ve
learned all the commands, so I know it. But in this day and time, most
people don’t know the DOS operating system, so they’d have a very hard
time operating that.”
To visit the exhibit, call ahead of time at (336) 278-5610 during the
summer. For more information on Conally’s art, visit the Web site:
conally.smugmug.com/art or e-mail him at nc4tc-tom@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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