Graphic Artist Displays 62 Photo Collages

Maris Cirulis talks quickly, in part because he has a lot to say. He's equally prolific in the arts.

More than 60 of his digital photographs will be on display beginning Thursday in the Boyle Family Gallery in 's . An opening reception will run from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday in the gallery, 2330 W. Clay St., St. Charles. Admission is free.

"Our exhibition program is all geared towards the students of course. We try to bring in professionals from all the disciplines," said John Troy, art department chairman. "I'd been working the last couple of years to bring in an award-winning graphic designer. That's been on my list to expose the students to."

"My friend John Troy teaches at the university. I'd worked with him many years ago when I was in graphic design," Cirulis said. "I've been doing Photoshop collages for 10 years, and John wanted to display them, that's how I got the exhibit. It's 62 pieces—unusually large."

"It's not our largest, but it is a large one," Troy said. "It's large for a solo exhibition."

Cirulis was born in the early 1940s in Latvia. His family fled the country when he was six months old to escape communist persecution. They lived in Germany for a few years. In 1953, when Cirulis was 9 years old, the family moved to the United States.

"Dad was always drawing, folk drawings," he said. "I started drawing when I went to school, in fourth grade. My stuff was much wilder, it had an edgy look to it."

Cirulis earned a degree in fine arts from the University of Iowa. He decided he didn't want to teach, so he took a job in graphic design with a firm in Clayton.

"Maris is one of the most successful and honored graphic designers from the Golden Age of Design (‘70s and ‘80s, pre-Photoshop) in the country," Troy said. "The work he is exhibiting at LU is unrelated to his award-winning commercial work, but his achievements as a graphic designer are worthy of a show and article on their own."

Despite his success in graphic design, Cirulis eventually moved on. "I left graphic design behind. I was always more interested in art than graphic design," he said. "The way I look at the world is through a fine arts filter. I'm much more interested in the visual look of things than as a marketing thing."

Cirulis' interest in digital photography was sparked in part by a new invention that came along in 1984—the Macintosh computer from Apple Inc. "I started working with the computer—for awhile I held out—and those first Macs are how I got into doing all my design work," he said.

"In 2001, when I got back from Australia, I started doing a few pieces. Then it took off," he said. "I started doing this full blast eight years ago. Since 2004, I've done this almost exclusively."

Cirulis works full time on his digital art, sometimes working 14-hour days to get a piece just right. He has four photographers shooting for him and works off a base of 20,000 photographs. From that base, he has crafted around 15,000 pieces.

"Around 8,000 of those are credible pieces," he said. "If I choose, I could have a hundred shows at the same time without the quality going down."

While Cirulis describes a lot of his work as moody and dark, he also creates pieces of a more cheerful variety. "My stuff is all over the place —flowers, cars, political stuff, people's faces. I do a lot of nice work, my eye is really well trained," he said.

Troy agreed. "He really does have a great designer's eye. This is more fine arts oriented. His selection and composition and design—all the elements are really very elegant and subtle," he said.

"Another thing about Maris, there's an underlying current in terms of meaning in his work—loss and man's inhumanity to man," Troy said. "That's a product of the experience of having his Latvian culture obliterated by the Russians when he was a child. It's a current that runs through his work."

The exhibit runs through Sept. 25. For more information visit www.lindenwood.edu/center.