Dan Abrams
http://www.folio.superbaka.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/superbaka/
Dan Abrams graduated as an industrial designer in 2000 from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and began working as a senior artist at Sony Pictures Imageworks the same year. There, he closely contributed to several Academy Awards before winning the Visual Effects Society Award for his groundbreaking work in virtual environments for feature films.
At Digital Domain, Dan acted as CG Supervisor where he helped rebuild the company under new ownership, and his work on Benjamin Button helped garner 2 Academy Awards, 1 Bafta, and 12 Visual Effects Soceity Awards. He co-authored a Siggraph paper for his designs on physically based rendering of CG humans.
He has also supervised commercials with directors David Fincher and Joseph Kosinski while on the side assembling his own treatments and director's reel. His personal work as a graphic designer and photographer has been featured in numerous publications and galleries in Germany, Japan, Canada, and America.
Ran Ortner
http://www.ranortner.com/
Ran Ortner was born in 1959 in San Francisco and lived along the areas rugged coast just north of Half Moon Bay – the home of Mavericks (one of the world’s biggest and most dangerous surfable waves). At the age of 5, the Ortner's set off from the Half Moon Bay airstrip in their 1947 rag-wing Cessna to move to Alaska. In Alaska the Ortner's built a log cabin, had no running water, a wood fire for heat and a grass airstrip for a driveway. To escape the brutal winters, Ran and his family would take their single engine plane on 3-4 month adventures from Alaska to South America.
The adventure of Ran's unconventional childhood was in large part because of a deranged father. Ran found his escape racing motorcycles. The abandon reverie he found in racing opened a door. As he says "On my motorcycle I felt to be dancing with the gods." When injures ended his racing he turned to the sea. Moving back to California at 18 he began big wave surfing. Surfing the cost of California and Mexico he considered his next move. Filled with a wonder at the dynamic conditions of life, Ran realized his need to make art. Ran has been living and working in New York City since 1990.
Artist Statement
In my art, I contemplate collisions of opposites, from the most tender brutalities to the most devastating sensitivities. These paradoxes register within me and I can see myself within them. I am continually surprised by the reflection between me, as an individual, and the environment within which I exist. As Robert Lax said, "The blood within and the brine without."
I often think about Rollo May's idea that "sustained intensity equals ecstasy." Every day I enter my studio, prepare my materials and, as James Joyce said, "go for the millionth time to encounter the reality of experience." I find that sustaining the encounter with life’s biting reality is not "miserablism," but rather intense engagement. The undeniable union of life and death is not dire but majestic as evidenced by the inevitable crash of each cresting wave. In a tempest, distinctions blur registering in me as the rhythm of life’s dance. Life’s beauty is magnificent as it hangs at the edge of death, insisting upon its relevance.
