All The Presidents’ Rooms
2007-2008
I made this series because I like Harry Truman and because I support Barack Obama. I got interested in thinking about all the other Presidents, and started placing them in virtual rooms and on various backgrounds. The Presidents’ Rooms were created as collages using presidential portraits in the public domain and 3D animation software, rendered on glossy aluminum at 12 x 21 ½ inches. — Ron Davis, 2007
Jump to artist’s statement about the Presidents’ Rooms
I made this series because I like Harry Truman and because I support Barack Obama. I got interested in thinking about all the other Presidents, and started placing them in virtual rooms and on various backgrounds.
The Presidents’ Rooms were created as collages using presidential portraits in the public domain and 3D animation software, rendered on aluminum at 12 x 21 ½ inches. — Ron D., 2007
Jump to artist’s statement about the Presidents.
#1 – George Washington Room, 2008
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#2 – John and Abigail Adams, 2008
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#3 – Thomas Jefferson Table, 2008
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#1 – George Washington Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#2 – John and Abigail Adams, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#3 – Thomas Jefferson Table, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#4 – James Madison Room, 2008
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#5 – James Monroe Room, 2008
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#6 – John Quincy Adams, 2008
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#4 – James Madison Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#5 – James Monroe Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#6 – John Quincy Adams, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#7 – Andrew Jackson Hallway, 2008
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#8 – Martin Van Buren Room I, 2008
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#8 – Martin Van Buren Room II, 2008
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#7 – Andrew Jackson Hallway, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#8 – Martin Van Buren Room I, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#8 – Martin Van Buren Room II, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#9 – William Henry Harrison, 2008
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#10 – John Tyler Trio, 2008
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#11 – James K Polk Room, 2008
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#9 – William Henry Harrison, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#10 – John Tyler Trio, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#11 – James K Polk Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#12 – Zachary Taylor Room, 2008
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#13 – Millard Fillmore On The Rocks, 2008
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#14 – Franklin Pierce Room, 2008
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#12 – Zachary Taylor Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#13 – Millard Fillmore On The Rocks, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#14 – Franklin Pierce Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#15 – James Buchanan and Wine, 2008
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#16 – Abraham Lincoln Room, 2008
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#17 – Andrew Johnson Room, 2008
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#15 – James Buchanan and Wine, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#16 – Abraham Lincoln Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#17 – Andrew Johnson Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#18 – Ulysses S. Grant Pool, 2008
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#19 – Rutherford B. Hayes Pool, 2008
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#20 – James Garfield Room, 2008
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#18 – Ulysses S. Grant Pool, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#19 – Rutherford B. Hayes Pool, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#20 – James Garfield Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#21 – Salt, Pepper, and Chester A . Arthur
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#22 – Grover Cleveland on Grass, 2008
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#23 – Benjamin Harrison Room, 2008
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#21 – Salt, Pepper, and Chester A . Arthur, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#22 – Grover Cleveland on Grass, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#23 – Benjamin Harrison Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#24 – Grover Cleveland Room, 2008
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#25 – William McKinley Wall, 2008
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#26 – Theodore Roosevelt Room, 2008
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#24 – Grover Cleveland Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#25 – William McKinley Wall, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#26 – Theodore Roosevelt Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#27 – William Howard Taft Cube, 2008
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#28 – Woodrow Wilson Room, 2008
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#29 – Warren G. Harding Room, 2008
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#27 – William Howard Taft Cube, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#28 – Woodrow Wilson Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#29 – Warren G. Harding Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#30 – Calvin Coolidge and Chairs, 2008
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#31 – Herbert Hoover Room, 2008
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#32 – Franklin Roosevelt Room, 2008
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#30 – Calvin Coolidge and Chairs, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#31 – Herbert Hoover Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#32 – Franklin Roosevelt Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#33 – Harry Truman Room Eight, 2008
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#34 – Dwight D. Eisenhower Photo, 2008
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#35 – John F. Kennedy Room One, 2008
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#33 – Harry Truman Room Eight, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#34 – Dwight D. Eisenhower Photo, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#35 – John F. Kennedy Room One, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#35 – John F. Kennedy Room Two, 2008
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#35 – John F. Kennedy Banner Four, 2008
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#36 – Lyndon Johnson, Bolt and Nut, 2008
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#35 – John F. Kennedy Room Two, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#35 – John F. Kennedy Banner Four, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#36 – Lyndon Johnson, Bolt and Nut, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#37 – Richard Nixon Room, 2008
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#37 – Richard Nixon’s Funeral and Dodecagon, 2008
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#38 – Gerald and Betty Ford, 2008
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#37 – Richard Nixon Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#37 – Richard Nixon’s Funeral and Dodecagon, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#38 – Gerald and Betty Ford, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#39 – Jimmy Carter Room, 2008
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#40 – Ronald Reagan Room Two, 2008
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#40 – Ronald Reagan Room III, 2008
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#39 – Jimmy Carter Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#40 – Ronald Reagan Room Two, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#40 – Ronald Reagan Room III, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#41 – George H. W. Bush Room, 2008
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#41 – George H. W. Bush Sunset, 2008
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#42 – Bill Clinton Room Two, 2008
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#41 – George H. W. Bush Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#41 – George H. W. Bush Sunset, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#42 – Bill Clinton Room Two, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#43 – George W. Bush Room, 2008
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#44 – Barack Obama, Day Two, 2008
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#44 – Obama ’08, 2008
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#43 – George W. Bush Room, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#44 – Barack Obama, Day Two, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
#44 – Obama ’08, 2008
12 x 21 1/2 inches
Ulysses S. Grant Room, 2008
47 ½ x 75 inches
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Ulysses S. Grant Room, 2008
47 1/2 x 75 inches,
All The Presidents’ Rooms really started with something incidental I was doing back in the mid 1990s in the midst of my ongoing artistic exploration of 3D computer modeling software (VIDI Presenter Pro). I was working on placing 3D objects into virtual rooms and importing 2D bitmaps and “installing” them onto virtual walls.
I happened to find an old piece of Harry Truman clip art, rendered in the typical dithered dot-pattern common at the time. Rather than “hang” a Rothko or one of my own works, I used the Harry Truman image, and I liked it. I got to thinking about him, and remembered being a little boy sitting on my politician father’s shoulders so I could see Truman on one of his whistle-stop speeches in Cheyenne, so I wrote:
“Harry Truman said, ‘The buck stops here!’ Good advice for an artist like myself. My Father took me down to Union Station in Cheyenne, Wyoming to hear his famous underdog whistle stop campaign speech in 1948. The Truman Image is an old piece of Clip-Art that has been on my hard drives for at least ten years, and I texture-(bit)mapped it onto the wall in a Presenter Pro 3D virtual room because I like Truman. He was a great President.” — R.D., 1995
Fast forward to 2004, when I started working with newer 3D modeling software (Cinema 4D). I again found the same Harry Truman clip art, and decided to try it with the new software. I was working on other ideas and abstract images during this period, but the evolution of All The Presidents’ Rooms was happening right alongside. When I finally sent my first group of new images to be transferred onto metal, the updated Truman was one of the first to go (to ImageWizards, a North Carolina fabrication plant). I enjoyed that new Truman Room (2006) so well that I did a series of five other Presidents on paper. I also did a very large Ulysses S Grant on metal; a George Washington; and a few more Trumans.
This year (2008) I started the new series of Presidents’ Rooms because I like and support Barack Obama. I got interested in thinking about all the other Presidents, and started placing them all in virtual rooms and on various backgrounds. The show represents a work in progress with the goal of making a full set of all 44 presidents.
The whole endeavor has been a tangent for me, but has turned out to be a valuable one because I’ve been challenged. It has become a somewhat obsessive goal to do all 44, because once I had the first five in front of me, I felt they all deserved the same attention. So I have been down a winding road of having fun finding other presidents and seeing how each would look in a virtual room.
To satisfy my obsession with getting a good, interesting formal solution for every president, I took a circuitous route, making multiple versions of the same image, trying the same president in different contexts and settings. (This has resulted in some presidents having more than one room!)
From that one piece of clip art, I was inspired to go further, making use of the internet, images I have collected, and information about the presidents. I have worked for countless hours learning more new software and techniques in developing
my own aesthetic, the result being virtual collages of digital information. Everything gets joined in virtual space and then the final work is uploaded – at the speed of light – to the fabricator where the zeros and ones are converted, transferred onto metal, and changed into physical matter. I’ve learned too about the new medium of aluminum – how images look on its brushed or glossy surfaces, how light acts upon it, how to frame the work, how to protect and crate aluminum paintings for shipping, and so forth.
On top of that, the process includes learning factoids about all our Presidents which affects what I do with their rooms. (For example, at the time this was written, Grover Cleveland was the only president who was president twice: the 22nd and 24th. And Buchanan made the worst decision ever in opposing the law that would stop slavery and prevent the Civil War. He did nothing, so the war took off.)
The Presidents will never take away from my career as an abstract illusionist because, fundamentally, I am not a representational artist. The presidents in their rooms have some of the quality of what I’ve called “meaningless unidentified objects floating in space,” just like the geometric objects in my other work. Nevertheless, just because every President’s Room is is based on such formal criteria, it doesn’t mean there is no expressive content in a particular image.
Some people may not understand the “package,” but all my work is a didactic, an investigation and a learning experience. What people think happens is that the artist has the answer before the work is begun. “Oh, the computer does it all,” some people believe. No way! This process is not like working in Excel. It’s a journey of discovery. It is sometimes very much a science – putting numbers into a computer – but there is an element of pure mystery as well. After my hundreds of micro-decisions have been made during its creation, and after the image has been ray-traced and rendered and finally displays fully, I am seeing it for the first time just like the viewer. Every little thing I do can change the final image a little, or a lot, and I never know until it’s done.
A suggestion: Don’t look at a painting as a product; look at it as a didactic, as much a learning process for me as it is for you, the viewer. Every President’s Room is a lesson in aesthetics, color, color interaction, illusion, shape interaction, spacial quality, light, texture, or composition. Not only that, but because the journey and the process have included historical study of each President, each piece is also a story, perhaps a little fable or tiny moral tale about the humanity of each one.
History tries to lock things into time and space, but I can put James Buchanan into a tract house or Grant at the bottom of a swimming pool. I can place Presidents into other contexts where they’d not normally be found. It’s not to show them as good or bad; it’s just what happened on the journey. I get very emotional and very patriotic about some of them.
This series works cross-media. It exists as a painting series on aluminum but can also be viewed as a contained slide show in desktop digital frames, viewed on home HDTV. Some can be printed on paper.
All The Presidents’ Rooms really started with something incidental I was doing back in the mid 1990s in the midst of my ongoing artistic exploration of 3D computer modeling software (VIDI Presenter Pro). I was working on placing 3D objects into virtual rooms and importing 2D bitmaps and “installing” them onto virtual walls.
I happened to find an old piece of Harry Truman clip art, rendered in the typical dithered dot-pattern common at the time. Rather than “hang” a Rothko or one of my own works, I used the Harry Truman image, and I liked it. I got to thinking about him, and remembered being a little boy sitting on my politician father’s shoulders so I could see Truman on one of his whistle-stop speeches in Cheyenne, so I wrote:
“Harry Truman said, ‘The buck stops here!’ Good advice for an artist like myself. My Father took me down to Union Station in Cheyenne, Wyoming to hear his famous underdog whistle stop campaign speech in 1948. The Truman Image is an old piece of Clip-Art that has been on my hard drives for at least ten years, and I texture- (bit)mapped it onto the wall in a Presenter Pro 3D virtual room because I like Truman. He was a great President.” — R.D., 1995
Fast forward to 2004, when I started working with newer 3D modeling software (Cinema 4D). I again found the same Harry Truman clip art, and decided to try it with the new software. I was working on other ideas and abstract images during this period, but the evolution of All The Presidents’ Rooms was happening right alongside. When I finally sent my first group of new images to be transferred onto metal, the updated Truman was one of the first to go (to ImageWizards, a North Carolina fabrication plant). I enjoyed that new Truman Room (2006) so well that I did a series of five other Presidents on paper. I also did a very large Ulysses S Grant on metal; a George Washington; and a few more Trumans.
This year I started the new series of Presidents’ Rooms because I like and support Barack Obama. I got interested in thinking about all the other Presidents, and started placing them all in virtual rooms and on various backgrounds. The show represents a work in progress with the goal of making a full set of all 44 presidents.
The whole endeavor has been a tangent for me, but has turned out to be a valuable one because I’ve been challenged. It has become a somewhat obsessive goal to do all 44, because once I had the first five in front of me, I felt they all deserved the same attention. So I have been down a winding road of having fun finding other presidents and seeing how each would look in a virtual room.
To satisfy my obsession with getting a good, interesting formal solution for every president, I took a circuitous route, making multiple versions of the same image, trying the same president in different contexts and settings. (This has resulted in some presidents having more than one room!)
From that one piece of clip art, I was inspired to go further, making use of the internet, images I have collected, and information about the presidents. I have worked for countless hours learning more new software and techniques in developing my own aesthetic, the result being virtual collages of digital information. Everything gets joined in virtual space and then the final work is uploaded – at the speed of light – to the fabricator where the zeros and ones are converted, transferred onto metal, and changed into physical matter. I’ve learned too about the new medium of aluminum – how images look on its brushed or glossy surfaces, how light acts upon it, how to frame the work, how to protect and crate aluminum paintings for shipping, and so forth.
On top of that, the process includes learning factoids about all our Presidents which affects what I do with their rooms. (For example, at the time this was written, Grover Cleveland was the only president who was president twice: the 22nd and 24th. And Buchanan made the worst decision ever in opposing the law that would stop slavery and prevent the Civil War. He did nothing, so the war took off.)
The Presidents will never take away from my career as an abstract illusionist because, fundamentally, I am not a representational artist. The presidents in their rooms have some of the quality of what I’ve called “meaningless unidentified objects floating in space,” just like the geometric objects in my other work. Nevertheless, just because every President’s Room is is based on such formal criteria, it doesn’t mean there is no expressive content in a particular image.
Some people may not understand the “package,” but all my work is a didactic, an investigation and a learning experience. What people think happens is that the artist has the answer before the work is begun. “Oh, the computer does it all,” some people believe. No way! This process is not like working in Excel. It’s a journey of discovery. It is sometimes very much a science – putting numbers into a computer – but there is an element of pure mystery as well. After my hundreds of micro-decisions have been made during its creation, and after the image has been ray-traced and rendered and finally displays fully, I am seeing it for the first time just like the viewer. Every little thing I do can change the final image a little, or a lot, and I never know until it’s done.
A suggestion: don’t look at a painting as a product; look at it as a didactic, as much a learning process for me as it is for you, the viewer. Every President’s Room is a lesson in aesthetics, color, color interaction, illusion, shape interaction, spacial quality, light, texture, or composition. Not only that, but because the journey and the process have included historical study of each President, each piece is also a story, perhaps a little fable or tiny moral tale about the humanity of each one.
History tries to lock things into time and space, but I can put James Buchanan into a tract house or Grant at the bottom of a swimming pool. I can place Presidents into other contexts where they’d not normally be found. It’s not to show them as good or bad; it’s just what happened on the journey. I get very emotional and very patriotic about some of them.
This series works cross-media. It exists as a painting series on aluminum but can also be viewed as a contained slide show in desktop digital frames, viewed on home HDTV. Some can be printed on paper.