Medford resident Joyce Harris Mayer is unlike many artists. The 78-year-old uses a computer to perform all of her work.
However, the actual subject of her latest pieces harkens back to an era well before computers, printing or writing.
“Rondels. Digital Experiments with Space, Line, Color and Form” is Mayer’s solo exhibit on display at the Villanova University Art Gallery.
Mayer’s works look back to the early days of art from 25,000 years ago.
Mayer was approached by Villanova after appearing in a group exhibition there a few years ago. The university wanted to purchase one of her works, so she sent it a catalog.
“They then asked me if I wanted to have a single-person exhibition at Villanova,” Mayer said. “I said of course I would.”
Mayer’s exhibit of 43 rondels is not for pure entertainment. She believes much of the general public is mistaken in their thought of art being about entertainment, because many years ago it wasn’t that way.
“I am an artist who has profound respect for art as one of the first intellectual activities for human beings,” she said.
Mayer’s work looks back at art similar to what was found in caves in Europe 25,000 years ago. Drawings of animals and symbols aren’t featured on the cave walls just for others to enjoy. Art was a tool, according to Mayer, and she spoke of how this tool was used to tell the history of the earliest humans.
“All we have from them then is art,” she said.
Art didn’t take a step back until writing was invented as another form of communication.
“Visual art became lower down in value and culture,” Mayer said.
Perhaps the most interesting part about Mayer’s work is she created it on the computer. Mayer said she can no longer do traditional sketching or painting after an injury suffered in 1990 made it too much for her to handle.
However, this setback didn’t keep her from continuing to work. Mayer had bought a computer for her son while he was in junior high.
He would end up teaching her how to use the computer, and Mayer took on a new way to capture her art.
“It took me a long time of experiment,” she said.
After learning how to use the computer for more than a decade, her newest art was featured in a solo exhibit in New Orleans in 2002. Ever since, all of Mayer’s work has been done on the computer.
Mayer said the computer doesn’t take away from her drawings at all.
Rather, it is simply a new tool she is using to communicate, much like how drawing on cave walls was a tool of communication for early humans.
“I’ve done it on the computer; everything was done on the computer,” Mayer said. “I am using the computer as a tool just as I would use a brush.”
Mayer’s latest exhibit was inspired by the direction the art world has taken in recent years. She describes much of today’s artwork as having to be objective and lacking creativity. Mayer hopes to change that trend in her newest exhibit.
“What has happened now, is the struggle in the art world is that artists are trying to find their way back,” she said.
“A way back to abstraction, a way back to representation.”
Rondels is open at the Villanova University Art Gallery through Feb. 20.
The gallery is open weekdays from 9 a.m. through the evening. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
