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From the BayConSequential, The Official Newsletter of BayCon,

Issue 4, Sat. evening, May 25, 2002

 

Let a master show you how it's done

Achieving a high degree of artistic skill is a difficult and time-consuming quest for anyone; however, some artists can make works that dazzle the vision and provoke strong emotions in the beholder. A true master of science fiction art graced BayCon earlier today, showing works that merged digital and traditional artistic techniques. Frank Wu's slide show in the Santa Clara room was a presentation not to be missed.

Frank Wu is a Hugo-nominated artist this year, in the running for Best Fan Artist (to be determined by members of ConJose), and his works are featured in various publications.  After a brief introduction [by Jim Terman], Frank took the orator's position and proceeded to elaborate on 45 of his masterpieces.

Some of Frank's artwork that was featured in Fantastic Stories took center stage during the slideshow. The magazine changed their printing method from black and white to color for 12 of his creations.

Mr. Wu used his skill to illustrate four stories for the magazine. The first image he discussed was derived from a story by Alan Dean foster called "White Hotel." The picture showed a ... woman in front of a mirror lost in a white hotel.  "SysOp," the next image presented, was inspired by deep space pictures from the Hubble telescope. The background of the image is a beautiful starscape coming from a small computer screen controlled by a woman who represented the Universe and had it under her control. Two other images were from a story called "The Witching Hour" and [from another story called "Stored Dreams", and I used as models writers Gary Shockley and Lori Ann White, the latter currently writing a novel about] the Boxer Rebellion.

Mr. Wu used his skill to illustrate these four stories with the most amazing hidden overlay of a wolf that was only visible when the magazine was taken apart and the four pieces were attached to each other. [The magazine will be published in a few months and after that, I will post the images on my website.]

The overlay paled in comparison to his creation for the story "Cloning Jesus." [The author is referring to the second image at the bottom of the webpage, featuring Mother Mary and Jesus.] The image shown was a portrayal of the Madonna and Child. In the picture various paraphenalia genetics research were included, replacing parts of the Madonna and Child picture.  The halo around Mary's head was a coded protein formula [correction, portion of the Krebs cycle], two Pipetmen stood in for the angels, and the bottom of the picture was a [hydrophobicity] plot of [amino acids] in a protein. All of this was cast on a background of a DNA footprinting gel.

Mr. Wu was quoted as saying "If you're going to do science fiction, it's good to know some science." In addition to being a fantastic and inspiring master artist, Mr. Wu has a Ph.D. in Bacterial Genetics.

 

I am not sure who wrote this glowing, kind article about me, but the credits for the newsletter are:

Editors in Chief: Robert Daverin (Red Shift) and Brenda Daverin (Blue Shift)

Copy Jackal: Tad "Baxil" Ramspott

Field Jackals: Matt Branstad, Jeff Brown, Lisa Brown, Barbara Johnson-Haddad

Reprographic Technician: Robert Szasz

Publications Manager: Hilary Ayer

BayConSequential is (c) 2002 Artistic Solutions. The text is reproduced with permission.  [Brackets] indicate my editorial changes to correct the text.

 

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