CCAC holds reception for August featured artist Russ Fagle

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

In just the second in-person artist reception the Charles City Arts Center (CCAC) has held since the COVID-19 pandemic started last year, Cedar Rapids multi-media artist Russ Fagle presented a workshop on digital art to local art patrons on Friday.

Fagle demonstrated how digital art is created, and said that art created via computer is not cheating or a short cut, and the process for the artist is almost identical to creating art traditionally.

“If you can’t paint in watercolor traditionally, you can’t paint in watercolor digitally,” Fagle said. “Of course there are ways to cheat, you can apply filters to photographs all day long, but serious artists aren’t interested in doing that — serious artists are interested in creating something.”

Fagle is an artist and art instructor based in Cedar Rapids, with nearly 35 years experience in branding, graphic design, art, illustration and creative development. Examples of his work are exhibited at the CCAC through the month of August.

He is a founding artist of the New Bohemia Arts and Entertainment District Board of Directors and has facilitated art-making workshops for many years and taught at the Eastern Iowa Arts Academy.

Fagle, who grew up on a small farm near Oelwein, said he was pleased with the opportunity to exhibit his work here in Charles City.

“I’m kind of a hybrid — part commercial artist and part classical artist — so a lot of places won’t present my work because I don’t fit the criteria,” Fagle said. “It’s great that a facility like this one in Charles City is open to all genres of art.”

A graduate of Wartburg, Fagle’s work spans across pop art and fine art genres, with diverse styles, from representational to abstract; from deep and serious to whimsical and comic. He is also a musician, father and avid student of world history and cultures.

He said he hopes his digital demonstration cleared up some preconceptions that he believes many people have about digitally-created artwork.

“I am fully studied in traditional artwork, and I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about how art is produced digitally,” he said. “I think there is a lot of new technology that artists use in a valid way to create valid work.”