DOWNTOWN
The Grand Opera House
Programmable Ink- Pen Plotter (Grand Gallery)
Moving Deeper into Light (baby grand gallery)
Grand Gallery: “Programmable Ink” is a collection of colorful abstract artworks by Paul Rickards that explore geometric art that captures the imagination with bold use of color, pattern, and texture. Paul uses custom Python programs with vintage pen plotters; a long-forgotten computer printer made to draw architectural plans or diagrams. Paul reuses these obsolete drawing machines to create one-of-a-kind artworks that are then drawn with just four pens of cyan, yellow, magenta, and black (CMYK). Each plot carries the trace of mechanical variation like minute pen skips, shifts in line, subtle changes in ink flow that give the drawings a kind of quiet irregularity. His work bridges the digital and analog as pen plotters take pen to paper, creating artwork without the use of “AI” tools. Each piece is unique, hand-selected by the artist from hundreds of algorithmic variations and plotted with archival pigmented acrylic inks on heavy 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper.
Paul Rickards is a Delaware artist and engineer who creates algorithmic drawings using vintage pen plotters and modern tools. Inspired by the early computer graphics pioneers of the 1970s, he writes custom Python code to operate vintage pen plotters, machines from the 1980s that he repurposes to create physical works of art. Paul owns more than twenty plotters, selecting each one based on the outcome he wishes to achieve for the medium. His approach is grounded in an intimate knowledge of the machines he uses, many of which he has repaired or restored, and in a fascination with the slow, deliberate movement of the pen as it draws. Some works are drawn directly onto salvaged media, including 5.25-inch floppies, reflecting his interest in the afterlife of obsolete technology. Paul holds a BA in CS and minor in Art from U. Delaware. His work has been exhibited at the Vintage Computing Festival and in group and solo shows at The Mill Space in Wilmington and Bantam Tools in Peekskill, NY. His works are enjoyed by an international audience of collectors. Browse Paul’s works shop.paulrickards.com
baby grand gallery: These paintings, shown here, are a residue of time spent in the natural world, begun in observation, they were resolved somewhere deeper, in memory and intuition. Light is at the heart of this work — not as illumination alone, but as a metaphor for understanding. The moments when clarity breaks through, when something obscured suddenly reveals itself, when warmth cuts through cold shadow. I work in layers, building the surfaces slowly. Responding intuitively, allowing each mark or color to ask a question, that the next mark tries to answer. I am drawn to what is alive and unstable — the tangle of branches, the surge of water, the way fire and blue-green shadow can inhabit the same moment. These paintings are my attempt to stay inside that aliveness, not to resolve it too quickly, to let the light mean more than one thing.
RitaMarie Cimini is a Delaware-based painter whose work bridges the physical and the contemplative. Trained as a formalist, she builds richly layered surfaces that reveal her working process while reaching toward something less visible — the links between sight and interior vision. Her paintings, informed by a daily meditation practice, tap into collective experience through the elemental language of light, mark, and color. Cimini holds an MFA in painting and sculpture from Bennington College and is an inducted member of the National Association of Women Artists. Her work has been exhibited widely, including solo and group exhibitions at the Belskie Museum in Closter, NJ and the Monmouth Museum in Lincroft, NJ. She served as President of Studio Montclair, a non-profit visual arts organization, from 2016 to 2019. Her work is held in private collections in the United States and abroad, as well as in the corporate and public collections of Atlantic Health Systems, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Sanofi, and the MC Hotel, among others. Cimini also facilitates meditation groups and has written about art and spirituality for the Huffington Post, Sivana Spirit, and her website, rmcimini.com.