Artist Stephen Cartwright’s art exhibit opens at the Tarble Arts Center on Oct. 2. Cartwright’s exhibit will display art he has created using wind chimes and edge glow acrylic plastic inspired by Global Positioning System information he has obtained over 12 years.

Cartwright has recorded his exact latitude and longitude every hour since 1999 and used this information to create an array of artwork, each inspired by a different time in his life.

“My art comes from just living life,” Cartwright said. “I don’t do these activities to generate information; I just do them and then realize there is information there that can be taken from them.”

Several of Cartwright’s pieces highlight GPS information obtained during his biking tours and time he has spent running.

One piece in particular is a series of blue glass panels that to the eye look like flowing blue waves, but Cartwright explains it is a log of different latitudes he has reached while running over the years.

“Some pieces are based upon the amount of average running and cycling miles that I do so on the floating landscape each line that’s parallel to the base is one year, and if you follow that line, it gives you my 30 day running average throughout the course of the year,” Cartwright said while showing off different pieces of art in the exhibit. “So you’re looking at eight years of my running average with that one.”

Cartwright has always been athletic, something him and his father, Phil, have in common.

Phil came from Ohio on Sunday to help his son set up his exhibit and said his son has been artistic from a young age.

“He’s been an artist ever since kindergarten and even before that. He got his first publication when he was in fourth grade,” Phil said. “He took a picture of a bunch of junk behind a grocery store and it was called ‘Yuck,’ and it was picked up and published by the local newspapers. Two days later, all of the junk was cleared up.”

Phil, who was the dean at Northeast Ohio University’s College of Medicine and refers to himself as the first “Dr. Phil,” has always been supportive of his sons work.

“I’m very proud of him,” Phil said. “From a very young age, he was interested in photography and drawing.”

Cartwright, who has been on bike tours and marathons all over the world, began riding at a young age with some influence from his father.

“He did a lot of running with my wife and when he was growing up and he saw me on bicycles and from very young he was very into bicycling,” said Phil.

Cartwright creates most of his art in a studio at the University of Illinois, where he has been teaching sculpture and art foundation classes since the Fall 2008 and uses a computer to turn the coordinates into art.

“With the latitude and longitude process, I record it on a handheld GPS and then I write it down on a log sheet; from there, I type it out into an Excel database,” Cartwright said. “From the Excel database, I can copy and paste points into my three dimensional drawing program that I use.”

With the assistance of the computer program, Rhinocad, Cartwright is able to monitor machines as they carefully cut pieces of his art out of edge glow acrylic plastic.

“Sometimes the fabrication of these pieces is two to four weeks, but the planning for these is much longer,” Cartwright said. “I used a computer controlled router to cut the specific shapes of these pieces so that sped up the work.”

Always interested in landscapes and mathematics, Cartwright found that through his artwork he was able to fuse his two passions into something creative that represented him.

“In college and high school, I did a lot of ceramics and I kept getting further and further away from the figure,” Cartwright said. “Some people call what I do now self portrait-ism because it’s all based on very specific information about me; it just doesn’t physically look like me.”

After hearing about an opening for an exhibit at Eastern from his colleagues at the U of I, Cartwright contacted Michael Watts, Director of the Tarble Arts Center, to see if he could show his art here at Eastern.

“He asked to be considered, and his work was reviewed and approved,” Watts said. “Our goal is to have at least one exhibition of art that uses new technologies as art media each academic year. We want to expose EIU’s students to art forms that they might not otherwise encounter, and to offer this opportunity to area school students and other Tarble constituents.”

Cartwright, whose art is also on display at the Columbia College in the art design gallery and Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, is excited for the opening of his exhibit because this is the largest display space he has ever been able to show his work in.

“The space in Tarble is great because there is a lot of room for the pieces so people can look at them from all angles, and they can really come to life,” Cartwright said.

The exhibit, which is presented by the Eastern Art Education faculty and the First Mid-Illinois Bank and Trust, will run from Oct. 2 until Nov. 28 in the Tarble Arts Center.

“I hope I inspire students with my art, and sometimes they inspire me and give me ideas. In a place like this, students will get to see it and I hope members of the public get to see it too,” Cartwright said.

Cartwright will also be giving a free lecture on his art on Wednesday, Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. in the Tarble Arts Center.

Megan Tkacy can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].