Artist Statement

In general, all of my work is in the optical art style and has been deeply influenced by my studies at the Yale University School of Design during my undergraduate years in the mid 1950's, especially by Josef Albers, one of the founders of the optical art movement and a leading 20th century color theorist, under whom I had the privilege and good fortune to take a number of very stimulating courses. In those courses I developed an unending fascination with the limitless possibilities for creating unexpected, intriguing and ambiguous visual illusions through the analysis and utilization of the basic properties of colors and simple geometric forms.

My two-dimensional works (acrylic paintings, silk screen prints, light refraction collages, computer screen-saver displays and lambda photographic prints) as well as my three-dimensional works (multi-view silk screen prints covered with magnifying ribbed glass, multi-view acrylic paintings on juxtaposed triangular strips of wood, and sculptures in plexiglas) all strive to create a visually arresting appearance that will attract and draw the viewer into an interactive playful relationship with the work, in order to discover and explore its varying visual illusions that will not meet the eye nor the intellect at first glance.

Looking casually at one of my works, the observer might easily be impressed esthetically by the forms and colors most readily apparent in them. But to really appreciate them, a viewer must look a bit longer and deeper into them to get beyond the immediate impressions of form and color that are first received. Each of my works utilizes at least one optical phenomenon that allows it to be looked at in a number of different ways, each way providing the viewer with a different esthetical, emotional and intellectual experience as the mind organizes the physically existing colors and forms perceived by the eyes.

Unlike most realistic and abstract paintings and sculptures, which present a single and unambiguous esthetic experience for the observer, my works present a variety of ambiguous esthetic experiences. Forms and colors are placed in an equivocal relationship to challenge the viewer to become more than a spectator, to become, in a sense, a "creator" of the work, as the viewer's perceptive faculties organize and reorganize the equivocal relationships into different psychic arrangements of shapes, colors, depths and movements.

Because of their many facets, my works demand an active, rather than passive, viewer, in order to be fully appreciated - a viewer who has the time and willingness and imagination to probe for the various perceptual perspectives by which to look at a work and, thereby, undergo a more rewarding esthetic experience. The viewing of one of my works should be undertaken in the same spirit that the serious music lover embraces while listening to a symphony or concerto. The perceptual imagination should be allowed to soar and build experiences as the intellect examines the structure of the work. Approached in this spirit, a work of mine can provide one with constantly changing perspectives that continually renew one's enjoyment of the work.

For the casual observer, my works offer a quick and direct esthetic experience that should compete in quality with that offered by most abstract works of art. But for the really creative viewer, who easily tires of the quick and obvious, my works hopefully offer a continuing esthetic experience of kaleidoscopic breadth. It is my hope that the interactive viewer who takes the time to examine any of my works from a variety of physical and psychological viewpoints will be well rewarded with both an intellectually stimulating and an emotionally and esthetically satisfying experience.

Frederick W. Umminger, Jr.

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