Going digital

April 8, 2005

BOB MARTINSON/Frontiersman reporter

It was 1959, the year Alaska became a state. Mariano Gonzales said his parents just up and left his home in El Paso, Texas, when he was a young boy, and he's not sure why.

"I guess they just wanted the adventure," he said.

He still has fond memories of the trip, saying with a sigh, "It was back when the Alcan was a real task. I remember all of us kids riding in a horse-trailer kind of thing behind an old station wagon, bumping along and creeping really slowly by huge rocks as we came up the highway."

Gonzales now lives in Peters Creek, after growing up in Anchorage and attending school at Creekside Park Elementary, Clark Junior High, East High and UAA.

Someone at UAA's Visual Arts Center convinced him to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, and Gonzales picked up a master of fine arts degree in metalsmithing.

He really didn't plan to teach, but because of his consistent dedication to experimenting with art, he had become well-versed in different types and styles of art. Gonzales loved color and delved into photography, mainly to record each of his art pieces.

"I guess I got good at it, so I started shooting weddings to make a few bucks," he said. Gonzales was also designing and making wedding rings, picking up a few more bucks.

Upon his return to Alaska, Gonzales worked as an adjunct professor for about eight years and later became an associate professor of arts at UAA, a position he has held for about 16 years. He now teaches a variety of art-related subjects, such as drawing, color design, color photography, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and digital fine art printing.

He's also a disk jockey and has his own show on UAA's campus radio station, KRUA. Gonzales has many fortés, but his most recent way of communicating things is through his digital art.

Gonzales knew how to use computers as they were first developing and UAA brought him in to get the metalsmithing and digital design classes going. But as he became known for different media, he began to pick up more subjects, like drawing, painting and photography. He draws his inspiration from artists like Salvador Dali, Albrecht Dürer and George Tooker.

"Getting into color theory, I started adding some digital tools into the process, because it is so important to create art quickly for any kind of commercial design application," Gonzales said. "These days you can make an area bluer or change it in some way and then the instant feedback gives you the opportunity to try any combination of different things, not to mention making it all much cheaper."

Gonzales says some of his students are afraid of the machines, others are so computer-literate they need to learn to work a little more with basic art techniques. His students come with a variety of talents, so Gonzales sometimes finds himself acting as computer instructor as well as an art instructor. Luckily, he is good at both.

He is known throughout Alaska as a photographer, painter and metalsmith, but Gonzales is concentrating these days on digital design. He recently presented some of his techniques to the Alaska Photographic Center at its monthly meeting at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.

Gonzales is married and has six children, yet also manages a very full life outside home and work. His radio shows airs Monday nights from 10 p.m. to midnight at 88.1 FM , and he is an avid eBay shopper and secondhand-store searcher. He finds many useful things for his art, including digital printers and other things he knows how to fix - things others have thrown away. He likes to play woodwind instruments he keeps in his studio, and has amassed collectable electronics over the years, including an old Geisha gramophone from the 1920s or '30s.

Gonzales says he has shown his work "everywhere you can show art in Alaska." He designed posters for UAA's theatrical department for many years and does posters for Cyrano's Bookstore, Café, Cinema & Off Center Playhouse as well as many other places. Last year, Gonzales designed the pin worn by the Alaska Democratic Party's delegation at the party's 2004 national convention. The pin depicted the northern lights and mountains, intertwined with the word "Alaska."

Gonzales said the pin was designed on the road, on his laptop computer, while his family was driving its large motor home from the Grand Canyon to Florida.

"I got to my very conservative stepfather's home in Florida and he wanted to know why I needed to use his Internet connection, so it was definitely a stealth operation," he said. "I was able to deliver the product to the command post under the nose of the enemy."