Today we’d like to introduce you to Philip Noyed.
Hi Philip, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I was born and raised in Minnesota. I have always been an artist and love creating art. I started experimenting with photography and film making in high school. I lived in Japan and I studied ceramics, shodo painting, and Noh Theater.
Professionally, I have been Creative Director for many years focusing on brand development, content strategy, website and app design, video and photography and graphic design.
Artistically, I was a potter for many years and then became an oil painter of brightly colored abstract paintings. I used slow-shutter-speed photography to create abstract photographs that was the foundation of my Geometric Illumination series of images lit by LED lights and my kinetic mobiles. My biggest commission to date was to create two large-scale art installations at the Minneapolis – St. Paul Airport, terminal 2. I’ve also pioneered creating structures like the Rainbow Pyramid using acrylic and LED lights. Recently, I jumped into creating in Virtual Reality by painting large-scale immersive experiences using TIltBrush and having the experiences developed using Unity. This experience is called, “Neo Art Space.”
I have had many one-person and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. I have been featured in several media including being featured on TV shows, podcasts, radio shows, magazines and newspapers.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Artistically and professionally it has a been a winding road of learning new technologies and implementing in a variety of media. I am constantly experimenting and learning what works and what doesn’t work … and this changes over time with advances in technology. For instance, fluorescent lights were the standard for many years, but LED lights became the new standard with many advantages including being able to program the lights. So, it’s important to always be aware of what is changing with technology and being able to both implement new technology and understand the advantages new technology provides.
Some of the struggles as an artist are generating a reliable income stream as projects come and go. As an artist, it is best to be a radical entrepreneur to find and create new opportunities. Further, using new technologies, such as Virtual Reality, keep me on the cutting edge. VR is still a nascent technology and I find myself introducing most people to how to use the headset and controllers. I’m excited for VR to become more mainstream over time.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I create luminous art that explores light, color and space in two and three dimensions. I combine the use of abstract photography, digital manipulation, acrylic fabrication, innovative printing technologies and LED lights to create color and light experiences. My artistic exploration represents the quintessential contemporary art movement that is changing how art is experienced today.
My art is based on a deep appreciation of the effect that color has on people both psychologically and physiologically. Light and color are frequencies that transform our mood, energy, and even physical health. My focus is creating light and color art experiences that transport the viewer to new levels of engagement.
My Artistic Direction is built around three on-going series:
VR immersive art installations. Virtual Reality creates completely immersive art/color/light spaces that people travel through. I created a “Neo Art Space” VR art experience where people go through 30 light and art experiences that if real would be 100,00 square feet big. With over 40 million brush strokes, this is the largest VR painting in the world.
The Geometric Illumination series is based on a radical reinterpretation of photography. I use my large abstract paintings as subjects for a variety of unique, fast-action, low-shutter-speed abstract photographs. I then use digital technology to amplify the images and free-sample the images: digitally cutting, skewing, distorting, replicating, and merging them into new geometric configurations (other than squares and rectangles). These images are surface mounted onto clear acrylic and backlit with LED lights.
The Geometric Mobiles use multiple geometric photographs to create large-scale geometric forms. The Geometric Mobile is lit by either natural light or spotlights that make the images act like stain glass. These mobiles are kinetic so they always change and activate the 3D space.
I also am an oil painter and create 3D paintings.
As an artist, I am able to create art that is best suited for the location – from large-scale public art to art for corporations or residential. My years as a professional Creative Director enable me to create using multiple media to create awe-inspiring art perfect for each space.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I believe that risk-taking is a necessary part of the growth process and essential to being a twenty-first-century artist.
In the course of my artistic career, I’ve made decisions to stop doing an artistic practice, like ceramics, to start an entirely new practice like oil painting. I achieved artistic and technical proficiency in ceramics, so it took courage to stop creating pottery to move onto a new medium. Throughout my artistic career, I’ve always moved forward with new forms of expression … often inspired by leaps forward created by new technology.
After painting, I started new practices based on using lights and new printing technologies, developing techniques to create kinetic mobiles and setting out to learn how to use light as an architectural element for the Rainbow Pyramid. I love the sense of exploration and discovery. In some ways, risk avoidance, to me, can mean living in fear of change.
I do my best to proactively embrace change and use change to take my artistic practice to new levels. My most recent risk was to leave my full-time job as a Senior Creative Director to focus full-time on creating Virtual Reality experiences as well as new art installations, art shows and art pieces.
My perspective is that along with taking a risk comes the prospect of a reward. I know, for a fact, that risk IS rewarding from a personal and artistic growth perspective. In hindsight, had I not taken the risk to try to new mediums, I would have missed out on many opportunities and not become the artist I am today.
I also delight in creating immersive art experiences that transport people to a sense of awe and wonder by using new technology such as Virtual Reality. These immersive experiences are “long art” that the viewer enjoys, without distraction, for longer periods of time rather than seeing an image on a wall and walking by to see the next image. There is a risk in creating in a new medium like VR yet the reward of witnessing the sense of joy, awe and wonder that people experience in my VR art experiences definitely makes the risk worth it.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.PhilipNoyed.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philipnoyed/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PhilipNoyedArts/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipnoyed/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilipNoyed/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/philipnoyedarts
- Other: http://www.NeoArtSpace.com
