Byron Sletten

Profile Updated: June 29, 2020
Byron Sletten
Residing In: St. Louis, MO USA
Spouse/Partner: Michelle
Homepage: www.byronsletten.com
Occupation: Creative in digital media, and online applications
Yes! Attending Reunion
Your email address (if you want to share it with classmates):

byrons@mindactive.com

School Story:

I just remember being wet a lot. Some fun and some tears.

Any higher education or advanced degrees?

BFA from U of NE, MFA from U of FL

** Comments:

In his former life as an assistant professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana, Byron had access to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and became interested in seminal experiments in computer graphics. With his interest piqued by both the power of graphics and his own vision of its near-term potential, Byron left the academic world in 1987 to develop a career as a creative agent, providing graphic solutions for clients all over the world.

Subsequently, Byron gained a broad range of experience in marketing and advertising, computer graphics, Web design, interactive design and information technology. He developed valuable, sought-after skill sets and accrued a career’s worth of real-world experience that put him at the forefront of emerging solutions for clients ranging from industry-leading corporations to new-tech start-ups. He helped launch products for Intel, helped design packaging for Lotus software (then the second-largest software company in the world), and more recently, he led creative teams in new-product development and rollout efforts for Anheuser-Busch, Cargill and Ralston Foods.

Although he’s been a partner at MindActive since 2003, Byron continues to polish the ever-useful skills of his academic roots by teaching professional workshops, by contributing as a member of the advisory board of St. Louis Community College and by conducting seminars for business professionals.

What do you do now?

Over the years much has evolved in graphic technology but my passion for fine art remains. I work using computer visualization, science and my love for the physical aspects of painting and drawing.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

What great and beautiful mysteries lie in the fertile space between art and science. This is the focus of my driving curiosity.
I use the beauty and simplicity of familiar, functional objects and their power to be juicy metaphors for much grander issues. I like to juxtapose those objects with images of deep space, human genome maps, slide rules, DNA structures, etc. I don’t presume to explain, but to express a respect for time periods much longer and much shorter than our own. Look, blink — gone.

It’s about respecting the beauty of the very small and the infinitely large. It’s about being humble— even awestruck— in the face of things we don't understand and perhaps can never understand.

I want to create evocative images that are visually beautiful, fun to look at and challenging to think about.

I play acoustic bass in a jazz band. We play for cause based organizations and NPOs.

Places you want to go?

We are considering moving to Bonaire, Dutch Antilles

What's the farthest you've been from home?

There was that dream I had reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem

Favorite Music:

all

Favorite Movies:

Right now... Idiocracy

Favorite Quote:

"It take a village of idiots to elect the village idiot"

Anything else we should know?

I currently completed a collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winning, two term U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser. Mr. Kooser (lives near Lincoln) and I exhibited these collaborative works in St. Louis, August 2019.

Also among a variety of current creative projects, I was recently awarded an Artist in Residence by National Parks Program to document “Land, Culture and Cuisine” within the Petrified Forest Park and surrounding painted desert.

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