Rod Imer
About the author who is also an artist …
By profession a civil engineer and industrial designer and resident in the Redlands (Queensland, Australia) he has been active in the management of reconstruction operations after natural- and war- caused disasters and in the development of Small to Medium Enterprises in developing lands: his work has taken him to many lands around the world including Tajikistan, Pakistan, Egypt, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, Mozambique, Georgia, Sri Lanka and Haiti.
Based variously in the Emirates (Dubai), Saudi Arabia (Riyadh), England (Sheffield), Germany (Duesseldorf), Spain (Barcelona), Switzerland (Geneva) and Australia (Brisbane), he has also written three novels and has received Awards for his Industrial Design work which includes “Best in Europe” and two “Worldwide Best Awards” for his work in the consumer packaging industry.
WRITING
Rod Imer ... (that’s me naturally), has been writing for a very long time, reports, treatises on how to manage projects, business reports and promotional papers on various subjects ... but writing fiction started not so long ago during my time in Tajikistan, which has a river about 50 meters/yards wide as the border with the top end of Afghanistan.
Just over the border in Afghanistan were mountains up to and perhaps even higher than 6,000 meters or 20,000 feet, rocky, bare, often completely covered in snow and ice and with no human facilities at all.
There were however a few hardy self-sufficient souls in small groups of mud-brick houses visible along the river and higher up in the mountains there were also a few isolated villages. Life in that northern corner of Afghanistan was not easy to say the least. Because, in Tajikistan, there was a road of sorts that allowed vehicular traffic running more or less parallel to the border river and connecting a motley collection of small villages, whereas on the Afghan side there was just a 30 cm (12 inch) wide foot-track running along the river edge ... (I hesitate to use the word ‘river-bank’ as the bank was often an abrupt vertical cliff face up to several hundred meters in height) and this track was the only way out to anything like civilization ... and it offered the only way out ... a one hundred and forty kilometer (140 km) (!) walk to the nearest store or medical facility.
At that time Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding out in these higher regions, but it occurred to me that he is also a civil engineer, an intelligent man (if also a very dangerous person) and that there was no way that he would be living in such an area under such conditions. So I decided to write a novel about this probability ... he must be somewhere else, in a very unlikely, very ordinary place doing very unlikely, very ordinary things. And so he was.
This is “TALL MAN LONG SHADOW”.
The next story evolved through one of my computers which was sitting permanently in my office in Germany, all by itself, always ‘on’ but in ‘wake on call’ mode, all the time while I was living and working in Spain. I communicated with that computer from time to time by remote wireless connection to retrieve faxes and recorded telephone calls, as well as filed data.
I traveled to Germany about once a month and stayed there a few days. The computer however seemed to acknowledge my presence and just occasionally started up, made a few clattering and buzzing noises and then turned itself off. On inspection, nothing had happened. Or had something happened that I had not recognized? Possibly. But what?
My imagination worried about this for a while until I had it figured ... the computer had been compromised by some kind of intrusion, probably by satellite connection. This thought, tied to my belief that ‘beings’ could not travel effectively over long distances in space and after research discovering that our communications and other satellites orbiting the earth were not shielded to incursions by radiation from outer space, brought me to the idea that we were under ’attack’ by something or someone that had electronic DNA ...
And so came the second book, SECOND CONTACT.
The third book contains something of my Australian background especially that part of my life spent in Australia’s Outback. It contains references to the Aboriginal Dreamtime, the Outback’s wild weather, and to some of the Outback’s wild people.
SHADES.
ART
Art studies began at junior technical school in Melbourne where the fundamentals of “seeing” were introduced. Following studies were undertaken in art and architecture during the artists' education as a civil engineer, with specialist training from Robert Gill, an art critic at that time who also taught him the fundamentals of industrial design.
Serious art began in Mount Isa where the artist was engaged as art-teacher for the Mt Isa Art Group by the then Council of Adult Education, and at a State sponsored exhibition in Darwin the artist sold his first paintings.
The artist’s career developed internationally at first in the Middle East where his industrial design and engineering knowledge was employed and where he began to sketch and make drawings and water-colours, mostly of local people and their houses. An eventual shift to England and Europe generally exposed him to the wider world of artistic endeavor, including access to international art exhibitions and museums and exposure to the great masters. The colours and atmospheres of Europe’s cities and countryside were completely different to those of Australia and had a considerable influence on his early European work.
During this period the artist opened an office and art gallery (ArtWorks) in the German city of Duesseldorf where he held exhibitions of the works of various young artists and sculptors as well as several exhibitions of his own works, which at that time were predominantly of the Australian Outback, its dry desert colours and landscapes. Almost all of these paintings were sold. At this point the artist began to paint his impressions of the seasons as seen in the parks and country-sides of Europe.
Upon his return to his home in the Redlands in Queensland several years ago he completed several paintings which reflect his impressions of the differences between Australia and Europe. He attended life-drawing opportunities at Yurara Art Society in Thornlands from which he has evolved the pencil and watercolour ‘BodyScapes’ which will be the subject of another exhibition. (ie these are not included in the current exhibition). Lately however exposure to the clarity of the Australian air and the vibrancy of colour and atmosphere in the tropical bush is now having a major influence on his painting once again.
He has also created a completely new art-form in his “i totems” which enable the concept of purchaser participation in artistic endeavor.
About the art ...
The paintings, photographs and drawings presented have been created over several distinct periods and encompass Impressionist and Abstract works in a variety of styles and media. They are presented along with the innovative concept of
“i totems” which enable a new owner to engage in self-expression in an artistic sense … Participatory Art … whereby he or she can add or remove items on the totem to realize a real “i totem” representing the purchaser’s ‘totem’. The i totems therefore also form part of the “Participatory Art” explained below.
The impressionist works include visualizations of the European seasons which present a vivid contrast to the lush rain-forests and air-clarity found in Australia. Current works include visualizations of Australian seasons where innovative ‘macro’ techniques are employed, and where his impressions of the glittering effect of the particular Australia quality of ‘light’ are captured.
The pencil drawings of life in the Middle East reflect the truth that not everyone in those countries is a millionaire.
The photographic artworks record (mostly) moments in time that are generally not able to be seen or recognized by viewers.
Participatory Art ...
The ‘i totems’ are a new direction in which the artist has assembled disparate and variously useful and non-useful ‘found’ objects and materials on human-scaled stainless steel ‘totem poles’, whereby parts of the various assemblages may be removed and replaced by objects and materials of value or interest to the purchaser, thus creating an ‘own’ artwork or totem.
The ‘almost blank canvasses’ where the artist has taken a canvas and painted thereon a single colour in a form that may be used by the purchaser as the basis of his or her ‘own’ creativity. This is not painting by dots but an invitation to participate in the creative process oneself. These ‘almost blank canvasses’ come with several fresh tubes of basic colours and several brushes.
Rod Imer
