This interview is largely about Bryce, but the largest section in your Site is taken up by your "Math Babies". What a lovely name to call your Fractal Art! It shows that you care, that you have an interest in what you do which goes beyond creating spectacular effects.

I'm a fractal addict. I have loved them since I was 10 or so and started seeing them in Omni magazine and other sci-fi and art areas. They have an elegance and loveliness that just really attracts my attention. I also find them wonderfully mysterious....they are supposed to be nothing more than abstractions, a picture design that is nothing more than a representation of a mathematical idea. Yet my eye keeps finding objects and shapes within them, hiding and waiting to be found....is that a flower? Look, there's a beetle. That reminds me of my grandmother's necklace. That kind of thing. So I keep making them. They are a great way to de-stress.

I have quite a fascination with Fractals myself. I've made Fractal slide shows for Nightclubs and I did a Performance Art Piece once called Fractuality. So, come on, tell us more. 14 Galleries dedicated to Math Babies, there's bound to be a story or two...

The Math Babies title comes from how I view fractals. Everyone who messes with them has their own definition of them, and I had described the concept of making fractals as if making babies.

Making babies...? I think you might want to explain a bit further.

It is like genetic art. Each picture grows out of the previous one, bearing some resemblance to the former, yet being a new creation in and of itself. Go through four or five growths on an image, and it bears only the slightest tie back to the original picture, just like how I bear a small resemblance to my great-great-great grandparents.

Ah, I see what you mean...
You also have four Galleries dedicated to Filters. Can you explain to our readers what Filters are, and can you single out two or three pictures and explain how you made them?

Ummm...I hope I can explain. Filters are little special effect things in image editing programs that you can run a piece of artwork through to make changes. Depending on how you use them, you can augment small aspects of your current piece of art, or take that piece of art and turn it into something else completely new and original. It's up to you. I just play around with them for fun, and post them also for the exact same reason.

Well, I can hardly think of a better reason. So the CG Filters are a little like those Kokin Filters in Photography. You can enhance Photographs with them, create completely new images out of existing ones ... and you can also completely destroy a good shot ...

I run a Bryce or a fractal picture through a filter that does something wild and odd, like flip all of the colors or smear the lines or twirl the image like a top and if I wind up saying, "Well, now ain't that something!" the picture might wind up on the web site.

So, applying filters is part of image editing, which means working with very complex production software like Photoshop. Not exactly something you'd enjoy, I should think...

My main image editing program is Paint Shop Pro 5, which is inexpensive and easy to use, two things which Adobe Photoshop, while having more options, is not known for. I looked up PSP on the net, joined up with their users group and ring, and that is how I found out about the filters. PSP comes with a few default filters, like emboss and hot wax, but the users group mentioned a whole bunch of freebie plugins and I had to try them. Hence all of the filter work.

next: working with Bryce...