The Commission: Dana Maltby

Dana Maltby is the rare artist who can sign his work using light. That’s because he specializes in a little-known arm of fine art photography in which light is “painted” onto an image using luminous tools and cameras set for ultra-slow exposure times. Amazingly, this so-called “light art performance photography” generally doesn’t employ post-production touchups. All Maltby used to create this otherworldly scene is, as he puts it, “the crappiest single-lens SLR you can get,” and light-up toys and manipulated Christmas lights. His main subject tends to be his own acrobatic silhouette, which he prefers to shoot in abandoned buildings or sewer tunnels in Minneapolis. “I’ve been telling people part of [my art] is being a little scared, out there by myself,” he says of his potentially treacherous shooting locales. “It wouldn’t be the same without the danger.” The recent grad of the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul says that he hopes this unique art form becomes more commonplace in the photography world, adding that, “it’s like anything—hip hop, skateboarding—the more people do it, the greater it grows.”

Camera: Canon EOS REBEL T1i; exposure: 99 seconds; aperture: f/5.0 ISO: 100; taken: 8/3/09

Notes on this article: I talked to Dana Maltby for about an hour. It turned out he was about my age, which made me feel under-accomplished. This interview actually has a long addition to it, which covers him dealing with a similar artist dying, although I'm not sure it ever went up on the website.

Artists We Love: Viet Do

Age: 39

Hails from: Vietnam

What brought him to Minneapolis: The appreciation of art and design in Minneapolis; seeing that a lot of the designers I admired were working in Minneapolis; the appeal of having seasons. I wanted to move somewhere completely new when I was young, because I knew it would be harder when I was older.

On designing for Target (he worked on a campaign that created a series of Target gift cards that doubled as rubber ducks, bubble wands and garden kits): It’s pretty cool working for a client like Target. They really “get” design. How many clients ask to be challenged with new ideas all the time? They are constantly moving, and as a designer, I still get new challenges every day.

Design versus art: Being a designer makes it harder for me to be an artist. I struggle with the need to always have a problem to solve. Sometimes I have to force myself to just start drawing, without a purpose or idea ahead of time.

Tips for teaching art to kids: I like to compliment my kids on the colors, textures or compositions of their work versus how well they actually drew something. I don’t want them to lose the joy of just creating. I am really jealous of a lot of their compositions; they usually have very strong and simple pieces that blow away the stuff that takes me hours to figure out.

Why he doesn't title and sign his work: I usually don’t sign my work because I am not used to that idea. In design, all of your work is anonymous. It's pretty rare for a designer to take credit for his work. Plus, I think my signature looks weird.

Notes: For this story, I wanted to profile a designer in advertising, because I think a lot of people don't even notice how jam-packed with impressive design the ads they see every day are. I called Little & Co. because they do a lot of the Target design, and they told me Viet Do was their up-and-comer. When he came into the studio, Do was very humble. He brought a set of watercolor brush-simulating black markers and drew on the background while I interviewed him. At the end, he didn't want to sign his name, which I thought was a refreshing lack of self-absorption for an artist.

Artists We Love: Marc Sijan

Resides: Milwaukee, Wis.

On his preferred style: I prefer realism. I think mankind has interpreted the human form since the beginning of time. Human anatomy is the most often-used subject matter. My thing was to develop realism on a three-dimensional scale.

On using his father as a model: The most popular piece I’ve ever done is my father. It’s a psychologically interesting probe: of all the sculptures, your father became the most important one.

On creating a Jesus sculpture: I did casting from sections of anatomy and I assembled it all like parts of a puzzle. Then I became a painter. I picked up my paints and magnifying glass and painted freckles, moles and age spots.

On inspiring a gastric bypass: This heavy-set guy came around to the studio all the time—he was turning into a groupie. He said, “If you ever need a real big guy [as a model], let me know.” One day I just said, “Let me do it.” Later, he walked in and stood in front of the sculpture (pictured at right) and he stared and stared and said, “Marc, I never realized I was that big.” He left in shock, called the doctor and scheduled a gastric bypass. He came back to the exhibit six months later. He was like a before-and-after shot.

On breathing into his sculptures: I was all by myself in the studio on a Friday night. My friends were out playing and I was working. I thought, “I want this to come to life, to flourish.” I don’t talk about this very often, but I put my mouth over the mouth of the sculpture to breathe life into it. It was corny. I felt uncomfortable with myself.

On his self-portrait in sculpture form: I rediscovered it in storage last year after 20 years. I realized in a heartbeat how fast 20 years went by.

Notes on this article:I first saw Marc Sijan's at The Uptown Art Fair and I was blown away. As a wanna-be artist myself, hyper-realistic art is one of my favorite genres, and his pieces all had a forlornness about them that seemed to reflect Sijan's personal universe. I talked to him twice for the interview while he was driving into Minneapolis for another Uptown Art Fair. When he came to the office for his photo shoot, he rolled in driving a big white van full of disembodied head sculptures and limbs in progress. He carried his sculpture in with the help of the art director, Bryan, and everyone in the office stopped and stared in horror at the stiff body we were shoving into the elevator. It was pretty funny.