With Art Old and New, Benjamin Patrick Queries How Digital Information Affects Us 

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• Courtesy
• "Mount Mansfield"

Every year since 2016, Benjamin Patrick has designed a Christmas card and printed 50 or so on sturdy archival paper. The lucky recipients aren't treated to an artsy revamp of Santa Claus or baby Jesus. Instead, the card is centered on a revelation — as in the Book of Revelation — and an appropriated illustration by an Old Believer.

That culty-sounding name refers to a group of dissenters who rejected liturgical reforms imposed upon the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-17th century. They may have been ultra-conservatives, but, according to Patrick, the Old Believers "have beautiful depictions of the Apocalypse."

His own message is a metaphor, he clarified: It's the end of the year, not the world — so far.

Centuries-old manuscripts are right in Patrick's wheelhouse. His fascination might seem an unexpected obsession for a guy whose artwork relies on the latest digital design technology.

Whether or not you're on the Shelburne artist's card list, you can see other examples of his work in the Dion Family Student Center at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, where a dozen 4-by-2.75-foot digital prints are permanently installed in a meeting space called the Roy Room. The images are stunning, dynamic and brilliantly hued.

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• "Mary"

Appropriately for the Catholic school, many of the artworks contain Christian content — specifically of the kind found in medieval illuminated manuscripts. But Patrick has distorted the original images by repeating, overlapping and pixelating the files and amping up the color saturation. The artist himself calls them "chaotic."

It's true that in some works the original content is barely legible. But the whole point is that something new and obviously digital has been birthed. It's reasonable to wonder what the artist intends to convey. In a piece that replicates the figure of Mary, for example, her form is interlaced with decorative elements, including flowers. The composition simultaneously telegraphs dispassionate duplication à la Andy Warhol and reverence for iconography deep in the art historical canon.

Patrick calls this a "visual détournement of the original manuscript that reconstitutes it for a new meaning in our present and its future." In other words, he reframes technology that flourished predominantly in the 13th to 15th centuries using that of the 21st.

Not all the images are gleaned from Christian manuscripts; others in the Roy Room are drawn from 16th-century Indian depictions of war horses or Asian representations of the Buddha.

About seven years ago, Patrick sourced religious imagery from library collections when he collaborated with Dartmouth College's Remix team, he said, referring to Remix the Manuscript: A Chronicle of Digital Experiments. In an article on the project website, Dartmouth professor of comparative literature Michelle Warren writes that Remix is "an elegant guiding principle for a deep history of the present that glimpses the future."

That's not a bad description for Patrick's approach to digital art making.

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• "2022 Christmas card (Revelation 10:9)"

His creations based on more recent, and local, history can be found at several regional hotels. Patrick said he was connected with the Omni Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, N.H., through Burlington architects TruexCullins — he credits specifically Pamela Picker and Nancy Ruben at the firm. On the walls between massive windows in the main dining room, Patrick installed large-scale prints "based on old geological survey maps from the time the hotel was built," he explained.

At the Lodge at Spruce Peak in Stowe, Patrick's prints hang in 198 guest rooms and cover the doors of 285 armoires, according to his website. They are based on old ski maps of the area, superimposed on each other, and a mountain silhouette. "I made the sky look like a constellation map," Patrick said. "That took me a really long time."

His third hotel gig was at the Hilton Burlington. The prints installed in 914 guest rooms overlay maps, vintage sail illustrations and waterfront views.

Patrick said he's open to more commercial work of this kind. "I like the idea of exposing people to artifacts of old and new, what visual language used to be and this idea of the digital relationship," he said. "I like those to be viewed in public places as a way to [show] what has happened to us, for better or worse."

Born in Burlington, Patrick moved with his family to Marquette, Mich., when he was 1, later to Hanover, N.H., and then Pittsfield, Mass. He returned to Vermont to earn a bachelor's degree in art at St. Michael's and, after a brief break, attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for a master's of education in art and design. Working in New York City schools, Patrick discovered that he loved teaching.

After graduating from Pratt in 2004, a position at Vermont Commons School in South Burlington lured Patrick to Vermont once again. Initially an artist-in-residence, he became chair of visual and performing arts programs and stayed for 15 years.

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• Daria Bishop
• Artist Ben Patrick and his daughter Rosie

Patrick took a year off to care for his daughter, Rosie, who is now 5. In fall 2021, he took a substitute teacher job at Winooski High School. When that teacher returned, Patrick joined the support staff, he said, substituting and tutoring wherever he is needed in middle and high school classes.

"I really do enjoy Winooski; it's an amazing place," Patrick said. "I love art — it's my main passion. But there's something about the social dynamics [at the school] because it's so diverse. You can learn so much about yourself."

In person and by phone, Patrick shared his thoughts about art old and new and how technology is changing us.

Where does your medieval interest come from?

The Arthurian legend was the first influence — or rather a re-representation of the legend. It just became something in my mind as a child. In high school, I stumbled upon the original [15th-century] Le Morte d'Arthur.

I just loved the idea, too, of how the depiction of the story was painstakingly drafted for the viewer. That's why I love the book of hours. Most of the work I do personally is from books of hours, because they were made for individuals — for example, husbands would commission them for their wives. There's an intimacy involved in that transaction.

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• "Psalter in Ruin"

Is that like a devotional text?

A book of hours wouldn't have the entire Bible; it would be a collection of your favorite sections plus important dates you needed, such as Easter. It was a personal selection of devotional material. It's neat to think this is the only [book] they had. They were made on vellum and preserved, and someone really loved them. I'm aware they were for the wealthy.

Were or are you interested in religion?

I am working on my sensitivity to the religious context. But I admire the artwork. I'm very interested in religions in terms of the visual, what's happening in every country, whatever the origins may be. It's all beautiful.

I know you find these manuscripts and other artworks at libraries. How does that work?

At Dartmouth, for example, I can just ask for a high-resolution TIFF file — I need the larger file so I can stretch the image. Sometimes there is a nominal fee; some are free at various websites. At a lot of libraries in Britain and Europe, I can just get online and find what I need, though I typically have to reach out for a higher-res version.

You have a very heady artist statement on your website, and I wonder if you can unpack one sentence of it for me: "...there is a recognition of how language and relationships have shifted in our present digital culture and how this digital multitude has influenced the meaning of our existence."

So, I have this thought that we were used to life before this digital platform came about; we were more patient, more thoughtful. The explosion of digital media and communications has created this complexity, a multitude. It has created, I feel, a strain on who we are, what it means to be human. The relationship to [artificial intelligence] and algorithms is something we need to look at and be thoughtful about. It's a new language.

It took hundreds of years to evolve previous media; it took digital about 20. I don't understand why we don't think about that more — not to get rid of it but to question it. We have completely succumbed to it. It's an existential question.

You follow that up with a wish about your artwork: "I hope to reunite the observer with a piece of history, transforming both the object and the observer with the questioning of language in the limits of our world." Do you really think that observers come up with this when they look at your artwork?

No. But I'm not sure they ever do, no matter what they're looking at. But no one can look at that [work] and not know that it's digital. Maybe in an unconscious way, they might recognize their relationship to digital media and start to question it. It's kind of obtuse, isn't it? Color saturated and layered. It's chaotic.

Maybe we don't have the language yet to explain this.

I give people more credit in the subconscious than the conscious world. Because of all this noise we have now, people are more fragile. I'm hopeful that people are looking at these [prints], or whatever art, and ingesting it subconsciously.

Let's talk about your Christmas cards. You told me you started making them in 2016, but not why. What prompted it?

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• "Nancy's Bridge

I wanted to use these Old Believers [illustrations] because they have such beautiful depictions of the Apocalypse. They were done secretly. I love the idea of creating scenes of the Apocalypse clandestinely. And they were painstakingly painted. I liked [using this in] paradoxical relationship to Christmas.

But Christmas is also about rebirth. I like working with paradoxes a lot — this idea of how, when you have this new invention, like digital, it does feel apocalyptic. I think this year's Book of Revelation [reference] is a good metaphor.

Can you explain this year's card?

It's taken from an 18th-century manuscript. That particular image was from Revelation 10:9 — an angel is handing John a book [that he is supposed to eat]; it is going to taste sweet, but in the stomach it will be bitter. When I was looking for a source for my Christmas card this year, this was the best metaphor for how we ingest digital platforms and media.

There are words scattered around the image — what language is it?

It's Russian, translated from the Bible. They were already in there; I cropped the image in a certain area.

Where is the original manuscript?

At the Walters [Art Museum] in Baltimore. I've only seen it digitally.

When you think about making a new card, do you look for timely meaning or metaphor in the imagery?

Yes. I guess that's why it's so much fun to work with old forms of manuscripts such as the Bible, because I'm more familiar with it. I was raised Catholic. When I use Islamic texts, I only use works they did depicting animals. I feel comfortable working with the image of Buddha, because I know it's OK to reproduce it.

What kind of paper do you print on?

I use German Hahnemühle paper for the cards — and for the prints that are at St. Mike's. For the prints I made at Dartmouth, I printed on vellum. I love the dichotomy of digital tools and original papers.

The material is very important to me — the quality of the paper and inks, like the material that was used for the manuscripts. The reason behind it is the archival quality.

Any plans for future exhibitions?

Yes, I want to have a show soon. I'm continuing to work on the book of hours pieces, using the images in the periphery [of the pages]. I'll print them and gild them in 24-carat gold.