March 2006 - Laurie Simko will exhibit this month

About the Artist

Laurie Simko grew up in Needham, MA and spent summers in Wellfleet, Cape Cod. She has always been interested in all forms of art, especially drawing, oil painting and art history. Her mother is also an artist who even with six children, always found time to draw and paint throughout her life.

Simko received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts. There she was exposed to not only fine art, but also film, theater, graphic design, music, art history, soft sculpture, and even Javanese woodcarving and puppetry. She made soft sculptured dolls and sold them in boutiques in Los Angeles.

She moved back to Massachusetts and worked as an art director in several ad agencies in Boston, and eventually worked as a graphic designer in various high-tech companies. For thirteen years she was the Design Director at Apollo and Hewlett-Packard in Chelmsford. Simko got married, moved with her husband, Jeff, to Chelmsford, and now have two teenage children.

In 1996 she left Hewlett-Packard to start her own graphic design company, called Simko Eye Design. Her company is a full-service communication and graphic design firm specializing in print and web design.
(www.simkoeyedesign.com)

In the early 1990s she resumed her drawing, oil painting and pastel work.
For the past two years she has combined her traditional pastel and oils with her digital imaging and photography. One of her great joys as an artist is exploring new concepts, themes and images, along with boundary-pushing combinations of high-tech and traditional art mediums.

Inspiration

Laurie Simko is inspired by things she sees in daily life ­ a face, a pose, an object she sees on a walk. She notices the colors, shapes and designs on the back of a truck, or the pattern and colors of rust on a trash can. She captures and brings to prominence the little things that one might ordinarily pass by.

The Process

First there is the inspiration, then the image capture with a digital camera. Once Simko selects the best images, they are digitally manipulated in Photoshop on the computer. The enhanced images are printed onto an archival, heavy weight artists¹ paper with archival water-based inks. Once she has her chosen print she draws on it with many layers of colored pastels
Laurie Simko can be contacted by phone at 978 256 0199 or email at laurie@simkoeyedesign.com

Simko Eye Design, Inc.
http://www.simkoeyedesign.com