Jim Campbell Exhibit

If you are in the Bay Area, check out the Jim Campbell exhibit at the Palo Alto Art Center. From an SF Gate article: The work of San Francisco electronics whiz Jim Campbell has never received a more considered installation in the Bay Area than at the Palo Alto Art Center. The 23 pieces present Campbell as an artist who gets inside mundane media such as pedestrian traffic signals, video surveillance and snapshots and finds hidden dimensions in them. From the Mercury News: For a sense of how the practice of art is changing at the dawn of the 21st century, you need look no further than Jim Campbell.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, Campbell has virtually no formal training as an artist. His art apprenticeship, if you can call it that, consisted of repairing video equipment and, later, designing integrated circuits for video here in Silicon Valley.

The non-intuitive notion of Heisenberg's principle is that the universe is probabilistic. This means that not only are you unable to measure the position of the electron accurately, but that it does not exist accurately. That, I agree, is totally counter-intuitive.

But at a time when many artists who want to create technologically based art seek a partner who knows the electronics and will leave the creativity to them, Campbell is a whole different thing -- a technocrat who discovered early on that he has an artist's soul...

''Up until about six years ago, I didn't even call myself an artist,'' says Campbell, 46, who still puts in one day a week at his job for Sage Inc., a company in Silicon Valley, designing integrated circuits. ''I always knew I wanted to do something with art. In the beginning it had to do with balance, the need to do something that was more poetic and less mathematical. I don't like to categorize myself.''

Check it out. Not just because he is one of the leading technology artists of our time, but because my Mom is the curator.

Jim Campbell Works in electronic media. Through April 25. Palo Alto Art Center, 1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto. (650) 329-2366, website.