Strange Art by Jeremiah Palecek

The internet is always in flux. Well, that’s really the understatement of the year. The internet is always being overhauled, re-designed, and broken links are being fixed, and people are spamming, and etc. etc.. Managing a webpage reminds me of my grandfather who was a farmer. While he did produce flax, and wheat which was for sale. The majority of the time I remember him was spent fixing broken tractors, and welding already precarious scoops onto loaders. Now, why do I bring this up in connection with a painting of the Gmail login? Well, from an early age I had a specific propensity to archive things. Things that were changing. I organized the world according to time periods, and kept a diary of both my dreams, as well as my life since age 8. This is the way the Gmail login looks today. But who remembers the original webcrawler icon? For me, while this electronic image is merely a logo, the time period in which I used Webcrawler reminds of a certain period of my life as well as a very specific period of time in which I used it. By creating these paintings of digital imagery, Im not only archiving bits of nostalgia. I’m also organizing different periods of my life. Some days when I’m visiting a page I ve been going to for years and there’s been a major site overhaul I almost feel betrayed. Where is my login button? Why did they change the banner? Something that has become automatic is slowed down a bit, and suddenly that gmail page I’ve been using for years looks totally different. So, the painting above is the way Gmail looks as of Tuesday, January 16. As it changes through the years (probably many years since google rarely changes their design), the painting will stay the same. I like that.