Beatrice Urich, who
recently celebrated her 92nd birthday, has experimented with art for
most of her life. Over the years she’s produced paintings, drawings,
furniture and textiles from coast to coast, from Burlington, Vt., to
Carmel, Calif., garnering many awards along the way. Yet her proudest
moments have stemmed from her association with the nonviolent feminist
movement beginning in the 1960s. Jane Howard featured Urich in a Life magazine cover article during the ’70s. And in 2006, Barbara J. Love’s Feminists Who Changed America noted Urich’s contributions as co-founder of the Milwaukee chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Urich also tuned in to the emerging field of BioTech Art, which she explored through a UW-Milwaukee grant in the 1970s that allowed her to work on computer-generated art. Urich, in collaboration with a company in Vermont named MicroBrightField, composed paintings based on neuroimaging. She says that BioTech Art is a technological process that fascinates her to this day.
What exactly is BioTech Art?
This is a concept that I developed with Jack R. Glaser, who founded the company MicroBrightField in 1987. Their goal was to develop neuroimaging, which produced brain slices on film. They’re very beautiful. And then I would take these images to create a collage type of art, incorporating other mediums with them.
In 1979 this was an advanced technique for medicine. How would this work in art?
Jack Glaser had me work with a technician three days a week, and we were going to publish a book on this technique, using neuro-images in art, under the name Neuro Art, which he copyrighted. They are still in Williston, Vermont, where I worked and lived nearby for many years, especially in the summers. But something happened and we were never able to produce the book, but I would like to continue with the idea. There needed to be another whole generation to embrace technology, become comfortable with it and the computer, before they could combine technology and art as they do today.
Has computer art always been a dream of yours?
Yes. Basically I am a shy person, but I knew computers. And I actually went to Hewlett-Packard, because they have art on all their walls in their corporate headquarters. But they should have used computer-assisted art on the walls. After one long afternoon of offices I ended up with Mr. Packard’s private secretary, just outside his office—and then I gave up. I should have kept going, seen Mr. Packard. But Mr. Packard bought one of my paintings at an art show later on.
What is your dream for art looking ahead?
I’m looking to talk about Neuro Art again—all these possibilities, perhaps even still publishing the book. I would like another med-tech company to pick up where this company left off—to use the medical imaging and slices [of tissue on film] in computer art. Now medical technicians, along with artists, can be creative with this technology, using it as art. This is a dream of mine.
Photo by Amelia Coffaro
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