Omaha World Hearld
Bar-coder feels like a scan artist
Scott Blake doesn't call himself an artist, but he creates art
By Ashley Hassebroek
Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock - now those were artists. So was Roy Lichtenstein.
Blake draws lines with a computer mouse, not a brush. He builds images with bar codes from everyday objects - books, soup cans, tampons - not a paint palette. He earns hundreds from a piece of work, not thousands.
"Nine times out of 10, when I walk into a gallery, I say, 'If that's art, I'm not an artist,'" Blake said.
Art or not, Blake's bar codes are getting attention.
Through March 6, his bar-code portraits will be showcased at the bemisUNDERGROUND, a new space at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
His work has been written about in 13 languages and in such publications as the New York Times. Celebrities, Jane Fonda among them, own his portraits. He sends postcards, flip books and other bar-code paraphernalia to fans worldwide.
But to Blake, the bar-code shtick is nothing more than a "really good parlor trick."
"I'm always trying to be an artist, but I'm not really an artist," he said as he rolled a pen in and out of small pad of paper. "Even when I'm in the middle of what I'm doing, I'm more like a construction worker or a mechanic."
Blake carries a notepad everywhere. When you first meet him, you quickly understand why.
The 28-year-old's mind - he calls it an "interior monologue" - seems to run faster than a computer hard drive.
As Blake talks about his work, he writes down words that come up in the conversation. The words might remind him of a task he needs to do later, or they may provide fodder for a future project.
"He's always going on, he's always got something he wants to talk about," said his girlfriend, photographer Dana Damewood. Blake moved to Omaha a year ago to be with Damewood, a Nebraska native.
"He's definitely not one to come home and just watch TV," Damewood said. "He's motivated, very high energy."
One moment Blake's explaining the intricacies of a Photoshop formula he created to group bar codes of a certain pixel value. A minute later, he's ranting about the perils of consumerism and the triteness of our "follow-the-leader" society.
That energy and an entrepreneurial drive have been part of Blake's personality since he was young. As a teen, the Tampa, Fla., native made fake coupons on the computer by photocopying bar codes. He used them to barter his way into concerts and to get free Pepsi, his favorite pop.
"It was a great way to get things and friends," Blake said.
After he graduated from high school in 1995, he enrolled at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to study computer art. A few years later, in the midst of the Y2K scare, he started obsessing about bar codes.
"Everyone was talking about the end of the world because of zeros and ones," said Blake, who later transferred to the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia.
He started thinking about the dot patterns in Lichtenstein's pop art paintings. Blake had always loved nonobjective art with a simple line and no real content. When he first saw a Lichtenstein painting at age 10, he was captivated.
"I remember thinking there was more going on there than just the dots," Blake said. "They each had their own story."
Blake tried to re-create the dot patterns. The dots evolved into squares. The squares mutated into lines.
Before he knew it, he was staring at a bar code. He decided to use them to create portraits.
His first was of Jesus - an image Blake calls the most "loaded" face he could find. He created a palette of 950 bar codes and scanned them into his computer. Then he devised a Photoshop formula that positioned the bar codes in the image of Jesus' face, based on their shade.
"What he's done is sort of defined a new gray-scale palette," said Todd Simon, a local collector who has purchased three Blake portraits. "He's able to create just about anything he wants out of these bar codes."
By using bar codes - a mechanism of commerce - to capture famous faces, Blake's work comments on what he sees as the commercialization of the individual in today's consumer-driven culture.
He thinks people should read more, write more, make more paintings.
People should entertain more, he said, instead of being entertained.
Other creations include bar code portraits of Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Ozzy Osbourne, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Ronald Reagan. He also does bar-code commissions of ordinary people.
With celebrities, he tries to use bar codes tied to them. "Madonna," for example, includes 107 bar codes used on her albums. The Oprah portrait includes bar codes from 36 books in her book club.
He also uses bar codes to express himself to loved ones.
He created a flower collage, "Summer's Make-Up," using bar codes from his then-wife's cosmetics. It was an expression of love.
A year later, when they broke up, he created a flower called "Summer's Break-Up." It was made from bar codes on the packaging of deodorant and tampons she had left behind.
His artwork hasn't exactly paid off, at least monetarily. He makes about $250 a month selling prints, bar-code tattoos and other paraphernalia from his Web site. His most expensive prints cost about $1,000. Most portraits sell for $100.
He has a full-time job at a local screenprinting business. Ironically, as part of his day job, he prints about 30 UPS and FedEx bar codes a day.
Blake said he doesn't want to charge more for his art. He just wants people to be aware of it.
"I want to do stuff that changes the world," he said, "and it's not going to fit in your kitchen."
Originally printed January 2005 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA