OM.2024.127 - Lanny Quarles - USA

OM.2024.127 - Lanny Quarles - USA - Monde Undig - Cine Cachone - collage on panel - 8 x 8 inches - Visual Poetry and Color

 Lanny Quarles is a Dallas-based multidisciplinary digital artist, writer, and poet known for his pioneer status in the digital art realm and his underground publishing background. Over a career spanning more than 35 years, his work has evolved from post-punk DIY printmaking into advanced digital collage, glitch art, and experimental AI art forms. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Art Style & Mediums

• Digital Art & Collage: He is heavily recognized for his digital collages and computer drawings, submitting his first computer-generated artwork to a competition as early as 1982. [1, 2]
• Traditional & Asian Ink Techniques: Outside of the digital screen, he explores traditional mark-making, including combining Sumi-e (Japanese ink painting) with abstract, asemic calligraphy. [1]
• Literary Influences: His surreal, dream-like visual universes with occasionally campy or sinister undertones are deeply inspired by literary figures like Rimbaud and Alfred Jarry. [1, 2]

Publishing & Literary Work

• Zines & Handmade Books: In the 1990s, he emerged as an underground publisher under the alias Toenail Gazooks featured in Factsheet Five, creating unique handmade books sold in independent shops like Portland's Reading Frenzy. [1]
• Collaborations: His unique textual style caught the attention of filmmaker Gus Van Sant, who asked Quarles to contribute text for his 1997 novel, Pink. [1, 2]
• Early Blogging: Quarles was a pioneer of the literary blogosphere, launching one of the internet's very first poetry blogs, Phaneronoemikon, in 2002. [1]

Exhibition History

Quarles studied in the New Genres Program at the University of Texas at Arlington. Nationally, he is represented locally by the Cohn Drennan Contemporary gallery in Dallas. His work has also been displayed at the Nisa Touchon Gallery in Santa Fe, the University of North Dakota's Binary Inventions collection, and he has participated in a video poetry symposium at the Tate Modern in London. [1, 2, 3]