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Nicole Ruggiero & The Feminine Digital

Article by Emma Howcroft

I came across Nicole Ruggiero's work by way of a growing fascination with the diverse, often dream-like realm of digital art. Having been around for the "freaks and geeks" era of the internet, I still remember the predecessors to contemporary digital art: sketchy Photoshop manipulations on Deviantart, which evolved into confessional, stylized pixel imagery on websites like Tumblr (à la Molly Soda and Arvida Bystrom), all of which has culminated into deeply complex, nuanced 3D scenes, often finding a home on Instagram. Ruggiero's work hits on all of these—herself having grown up on old-school Photoshop—but also develops its ownparticular sense of sterile intimacy and detail that sets the work apart.

Ruggiero’s images are impressive in their completeness: her renderings illustrate her obvious skill in crafting and coding. However, it is Ruggiero's interplay between body and femininity that makes the work seductive. She pairs robotic, idealized female forms with softness, maybe adding a splash of purple hickeys, or a coffee mug, a heart-shaped double bed, or a glowing iPhone screen to an otherwise alien landscape. Ruggiero's work injects humanity into its inhumanity. The synthetic bodies she creates feel alive, and they are filled with sorrow, delight, and a wonderful girlishness that recall digital art’s diversity and limitlessness.

How did you start creating digital art? I started creating digital art when I was 12. I asked my dad for a Wacom tablet for Christmas and I started painting in Photoshop. I studied graphic design in school and started doing 3D about a year and a half ago.

What types of obstacles are unique to an artist creating 3D digital art?

Well for me, in 3D, you have to think about a lot more than just creating something digital in 2D. Instead of just designing a figure, you also have to act like a photographer/videographer posing a model, creating a set, doing the lighting, and positioning the camera.

How do your images usually come together? Do you plan everything out beforehand or do things fall into place as you go? I definitely don’t completely plan things out beforehand — I find that to be kind of restricting. I usually go into a piece with a general idea and execute from there. I think it’s fun when things sort of just come together after working with them. Sometimes I hate a piece and then I post it and realize I actually love it and sometimes the opposite happens and I wind up deleting it.

How does the iPhone and Apple influence your work? Hahaha, tbh I love Apple products. I actually can’t even use Apple computers anymore for my work because they aren’t powerful enough but the design that goes into the products really resonates with my perfectionist/minimalist side.

What role does femininity play in your images? How does your conception of femininity interact with technology as a whole? Ummm, I -love- femininity. In myself and in other people, I’m very attracted to it. I think there’s something in a person that can access both his or her feminine and masculine sides. Since masculinity is already so accepted in society and within the 3D art field, I think it’s important to have a representation of femininity.

A lot of your images feel confessional, do any of your own personal narratives influence your work? Haha, yes. Definitely. I didn’t realize that came out so heavily. My work is based on my own emotions and personal experiences. When I sit down to create a piece I draw from things that I have been feeling most recently and express that in a way I feel that people will relate to it. It’s almost cathartic for me in a sense.

Any plans for future projects? For sure! I’ve been working on an AR exhibition for the past few months with Molly Soda and Refrakt. [...] After that I’m planning on doing a VR project, I’m in talks with a few people right now who want to work on that with me. At the end of the Summer I want to do an exhibition in Berlin with my artist collective, Post Vision. And by the end of the year I want to have a solo show. Lots of plans! LOL. Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with? I’d love to collaborate with a VR company soon to host a dual VR/IRL experience in a space in either NYC or California.

Any advice for young artists looking to begin creating digital art? Just keep at it! The learning curve is really steep but once you get over that it’s a lot easier. The world of 3D is great. Because it’s not over-saturated, you’re more visible than you would be if you entered a field like graphic design or digital painting, or something similar that’s been around for a while.

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Duo (2 of 7) by Thorben Eggers

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One week left to submit to Issue No. 4!

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[De]gradation by Marta Wlusek

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AYYYYY come thru ~

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Haute Verschiebung (1 of 7) by Thorben Eggers

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Issue No. 2 is available now on Blurb!

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COME THRU

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2 cute girls by @_nicoleruggiero in collaboration with Abi Laurel #flatmag2 #flatmagazine #3d #3dart #digitalart #technology (at Brooklyn, New York)

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Contemporary Black Artists on Tumblr

Have you popped into the Black artists on Tumblr tag yet? It’s an endless scroll of GIFs, photography, paintings, illustrations, and more, more, more. Here’s a small collection of Tumblrs you can follow to get you started:

The Artist Akuji (@theartistakuji​)

Beautiful digital art that just feels clean, fresh, and pleasing to look at. The artist’s Jamaican-American background shines through in a lot of her work, like this “West Indie” piece.

Maya Ajani (@mayaajani​)

Gritty, detailed, cool as hell marker art. Everything is a little bit gnarled up and raw and, just to repeat with deserved emphasis, cool as hell.

Liam Gavyn Salt (@liamgavynsalt​)

Liam Salt dabbles in seemingly all things visual art: painting, digital, photography, illustration. He does it all well, but It’s his GIFed up self-portraits that we wanted to showcase. Those are some finely tuned, well-thought-out scribbles up there.

Into this stuff? Want more of it? Right over here. 

Don’t miss our upcoming BHM Answer Times. Next week we’ll have:

2/6—The activists behind the TheBlackout movement (@theblackoutofficial) are already taking your questions. Ask them about the second anniversary of #blackout, the current goals and future of their mission, or anything else you find relevant. 

2/7—Fashion designer Jerome Lamaar (@531jerome).

2/8—Emil Wilbekin (@worldofwilbekin), fashion journalist and LGBTQ rights activist.

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Submit by March 1st at 11:59pm EST to be considered for our third issue!

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Announcing the artists for Issue No. 2 ~ The Technology Issue

Brooks Behrens

Clark Goolsby

Nicole Vega

Markus Paulix

Andrea Ibarra

Omaar González López

Alexander Coggin

Brian Vu

Phillip Stearns

Nicole Ruggierio

Dmitry Morozov

Leigh Blanchard

Featuring Ewa Doroszenko 

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Submit by Jan. 10th at 11:59pm EST to be considered for Issue No. 2! (at New York, New York)

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Deadline is January 10th at 11:59pm EST!

Submit to Issue No. 2!

Calling all creatives! We are looking for art to feature in our next issue. Email files under 5MB to helloflatmag@gmail.com !

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Two weeks left to submit to Issue No. 2! #flatmag2 #opencall #callforart (at Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn)

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HEADS WILL ROLL

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smithsonfreddie@gmail.com

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text me when u get there by Charlie Rubin @charlierubin / another gem 💎 by our first featured artist

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