By Brady Ehler Recently, I was able to catch up with Coquitlam artist and Douglas College student, Amanda Schindelka to discuss her unique brand of people-twisting digital artistry, and morals in the field of digital art. Ehler: What first attracted you to digital art? Schindelka: Mostly it was a class I was taking in high school called Knowledge Architecture. We learned how to use Photoshop to create things like fire and ice effects. So I just started playing around with the stuff that I had learned in that class. After that, I discovered the Art of Alice Egoyan and Beth Bajema, and they became my inspirations. Ehler: What inspired you about these two artists? Schindelka: Mostly the absolute beauty of their pieces [and] the ethereal magical quality of their subjects. That and the fact that these where all origi- nal pictures that these two ladies had taken and altered to fit their ideals of what the subjects should be. It was a sort of control, a way to shape the world around me, create beautiful things from the mundane, a way to make ordinary people look extraordinary. Ehler: What aspects of ordinary do you try to enhance in your work? Schindelka: Well, part of it is making the subject reflect my own thoughts and feelings at the time of creation. As far as enhancing the ordinary, it’s more a subtle change, almost idealizing how these subjects look, how I would want to see them. OQUITLAM THIS WEEK oquitiam Artist Permutates People Ehler: So, it’s not so much about bring out what you see within the subject, but what you can turn the subject into? Schindelka: Yes, that sounds better. Ehler: You're starting to make quite a business of selling your work. How did you start getting recognition? Schindelka: Mostly it was through friends expressing interest in my art. Then friends of friends, and eventually they all started pressuring me to offer prints of my work. So I made a few to begin with, and they all got snatched up right away, so I made more. That’s really how it all started, I wouldn’t say that I could live off my art right now, but it’s a nice dream, one that I think every artist has. Ehler: Do think an artist can gain real recognition these days from word of mouth? Schindelka: Oh I think it’s possible, defiantly harder than say through mass exposure (newspapers, T'V, gallery showings). But if you get enough people excited about your art, and they tell their friends, and those friends get excit- ed, and so on, you can achieve quite a large amount of recognition. In fact I believe that’s how every artist starts out, until the word of mouth reaches the right ears. Ehler: Obviously, you don’t mind altering the human form for your own artistic purposes. How do you feel about models being augmented and air- brushed for advertisements? Would you ever consider becoming a touch-up artist for an advertisement company? Schindelka: I don’t have a problem with models and advertisements being airbrushed per se, but I do have a problem with those alterations being passed off as “the natural beauty” of these girls. I think it gives young girls an unnatural expectation of beauty to live up to. Although, would I take a job as a touch up artist? I guess it would ultimately come down to the com- pany and what exactly I was re-touching and why. Ehler: If it was a job smoothing skin, removing imperfections, augmenting the shape of breasts, length of legs, etc. on female models? Schindelka: I would have a real moral dilemma doing that. I say now that I wouldn’t do it, but I guess you have to look at things always as a possibility. I hope that eventually there won’t be a job doing that, and that I’ll never have to be placed in that moral quandary. Ehler: So, if you were offered a large sum of money, you’d be tempted? Schindelka: It would have to be an obscene amount of money, but yes. In this world, money talks. If it didn’t, there would be very little use for higher education. But in order to buy my morals, so to speak, it would have to be a very large sum of money, and that would allow me to use it for myself, as well as for others. To check, out_Amanda Schindelka’s art, you can visit the temporary site, at: www. flickr.com/ photos/ seejackrun. The official site, www.angelmeat.com will be up and running in January.