Michael Caci (b. 1954)

Michael Caci was born in upstate New York into an artistic Sicilian immigrant family. Relocating to the West Coast as an adult he attended Humboldt State University, CA and the University of Washington, WA. He settled in Seattle where he lives and works.

At the University of Washington, he studied painting, printmaking and digital photography and began combining photographic and traditional painting and drawing processes with digital technologies. In the late 1990s he began experimenting with large format digital printers and software. These experiments created a new path for his artistic output and expression which continues in this current work.

Michael Caci’s work is an expression of an experimentally curious mind. He challenges himself and the traditionally accepted use of artist materials by posing disparate materials together in the tradition of Sigmar Polke; industrial materials, traditional paintings, photography – both his own and appropriated from the web; a lifetime process that’s come together in his oeuvre today.

Caci’s mixed media works are comprised of photography printed on multiple layers of transparent and dichroic films, built upon a foundation of painting, with multiple layers of resin between each. From the artist’s initial concept to completion, with every layered detail meticulously applied, each of these stunningly beautiful handmade artworks take 12-16 months to finish. The primary subject has usually been appropriated from online sources, digitally altered for color, scale, and detail, often with elements hand-cut and printed on transparent or dichroic film. The flora background and fields are Caci’s own photography, again printed on transparent or dichroic films, woven between the films of the subject and over the foundational painting, with applications of resin between each.

Due to the artist’s hard-won insight about the various characteristics of these films and layers of resin, light plays a particularly significant role in these works as colors and shades shift, details disappear and reappear, with the viewers perspective, sparking the eye’s curiosity, and enhancing ones visual and emotional engagement with the image. These are extremely elaborate, time-consuming, and completely hand-made works of art that bring together modern technology with “Old World” mediums and craft, creating something remarkable, technically unique, and aesthetically stunning.

Michael’s art has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and cultural centers, including the Schneider Museum of Art of Southern Oregon University in Ashland, the Ceres Gallery in New York City, Expressions Gallery in Berkeley, California, the Gary Manuel Gallery in Seattle, the Clara Hatton Gallery of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and the WRO Billboards Project in Berlin. His work is in private and corporate collections, including the Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Seattle.

Endangered Nature

The Endangered Nature Series is based on Caci’s own love and concern for our environment and humans affect on the planet and its non-human inhabitants.