"The Greatest," 2006, 7.75" x 7.75" Epson Archival Print on White Cotton Paper

Beginning Saturday, Nov. 4, the Flood Fine Art Center will present new work by artist Lorraine Walsh. On exhibit will be digital prints, motion media and installation exploring nature and perception. In this work, Walsh creates landscapes inspired by diverse forms, utilizing various species of butterflies and other insects. This new work also expresses subtle references to warfare, hence the title of the exhibition, "Fly Zones."

Lorraine Walsh’s art addresses ideas related to science and nature in contemporary society. She approaches a range of work that interprets the impenetrability of superstring theory, creates new eyespots on butterflies, or invents patterns from social insects. Recently, she has reached back into time to explore fundamental particles as predicted by string theory. Here, Walsh draws upon dimensions and forms in space, creating patterns that explore the physics of things that are both tiny and massive.

Art critic Nancy Princenthal writes, “Lorraine Walsh’s Superstrings, an Iris Print, is … buoyant, it vibrates with the microcosmic activity of particles in motion, oscillating between energy and matter.”

In Walsh’s work on insects, she weaves together concepts based on their organizational capabilities with aspects of computerized systems, often representing larger ideas about societies in general. Her current work in digital print and motion media springs from the infinite variety and sublime beauty of butterfly spots and insect wings. Walsh explores existing shapes and form, while creating her own new “spots” and imagery. In a sense, she is creating new structures by hybridizing specimens, which are the result of digital manipulation and combines. These recombinant landscapes and insects suggest an alternative environment that is not possible by traditional evolutionary processes. Rather than through DNA replication, the variation, recurrence and selections are digitally determined by the artist.

Walsh’s art is exhibited internationally in venues, including the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, and the José Martí National Library in Havana, Cuba. Additionally, her work is exhibited in a broad range of gallery exhibitions, and is included in several collections. In recent years, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time Out New York, and other publications have featured her work. She has lectured nationally and internationally. A recipient of numerous awards and grants, Walsh recently worked with multimedia and physics students on a collaborative astronomy grant from the National Science Foundation for the visualization of the radio sky.

Lorraine Walsh is director and assistant professor of Multimedia Arts and Sciences at UNC Asheville. Former visiting assistant professor in Digital Design and Interactive Media at Pratt Institute in N.Y., Walsh holds a bachelor's degree from Parsons School of Design and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Other academic experience and guest artist positions include Lafayette College, Rutgers University and Wellesley College. As a designer, she has developed graphics and interactive media for the Petrosains Discovery Center and Science Museum in Malaysia, The National Geographic Society and The Smithsonian Institution. As an artist and a teacher, she believes in combining digital technologies with traditional techniques. Her work merges time-honored practices in printmaking, photography and drawing, alongside digital methodologies.