Why?

I have never thought of myself as an artist.  In elementary school, I was taken off group art projects because I had terrible coloring skills.  I never could draw or sketch or do anything that seemed artistic.

When my brother was taking art, I wanted to try.   I was inspired by the abstract art of Piet Mondrian. To make it easier, I tried making a similar geometric design using tape to mask parts of the canvas.  Even that was terrible, as I am just too messy and impatient.

In college, we had to paint our pledge paddles.  Knowing I was not great at painting, I sought inspiration by Jackson Pollock.  My splashed on paddle actually ended up looking pretty good, but some folks did not like it since it looked like I just splashed paint on the wood. 

In my daily life, the most artistic experience I get is playing with Powerpoint for making technical presentations.  Recently, I put together a kids book on behavior (Scout and Lout) using just Powerpoint.  It was nothing special but I also think it turned out fairly well.

My wife recently bought a vinyl cutter.  This opened my eyes to making something artistic.  I could use my Powerpoint skill to design and create images that would then be cut into vinyl.  Again, not exactly high art but it offered a way to be slightly artistic.

I may be able to do a few things in Powerpoint, but I really can make computers do things.  It is like a puzzle to make the computer code do what you want.  Plus, this could be a way to introduce new coders to something interesting.  I had used Scratch for a variety of coding projects, and some were artistic.  Scratch is a great way to introduce folks to coding, but it is limited in some ways.  One great thing about Scratch is the community and the ability

Finally, I spend an afternoon with my wife at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on a cold February day in 2018.  I saw some modern works that I realized could be emulated with a few lines of code.  So I went home and wrote a few lines...

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