Biography:

Noreen Greeno earned a B.A. in art, philosophy, humanities and English from the University of Minnesota. While working in television for several years as everything from camera-person to writer to producer/director, she discovered that she was always hanging in the graphic design departments and decided to study art seriously at Eastern Michigan University.

Upon completing her MFA in painting from Eastern Michigan University, she taught Advanced Drawing as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 1976 she moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and became director of education at the then-largest community art center in the United States. In 1984 she moved to Berkeley, California and co-founded the design firm Academic Arts, from which she retired in 2003 in order to return to Pittsburgh.

Statement:

My work has followed two main paths: a love of type and its relation to meaning, which I pursued professionally; and ephemeral computer art which I have pursued since 1985. Everything in this exhibit’s Memory Boxes relates to my time at Eastern Michigan University, ca. 1968. There are copies of old photographs, there are “artifacts” related to Andrew Lugg and John Orentlicher’s Plow, Drag, Skid. Finally, there are copies of what are normally ephemeral computer pieces, many of them echoes of things discussed at Eastern Michigan University.

While at Eastern Michigan University I became interested in found art, particularly as it illuminates the concept of what constitutes an artwork. Before leaving, my work had already moved in the direction of the temporary as opposed to the permanent. One of those early works, Belshazzar’s Feast, is represented on this web site. During this time relationships between visual content and meaning became my major interest. The other work represented here is one page of a current ephemeral piece made for this exhibit, Object.

I’m still captivated by Max Headroom, an innovative British movie and television character who “lived” inside computers and who possessed a combination of human and machine intelligence. In some ways the alter-ego of a reporter, he was capable of zapping around from one computer to another; they were his streets and highways, the facilitators of his ability to communicate. Max was a subversive character, questioning everything but not providing answers.

My current artwork bears a strong relationship to Max. It resides on computers. It can zap around from one computer to another, dropping in when you don’t expect it. It questions, I hope, shibboleths of the art world. It is transitory, fragile and completely ephemeral, existing only as electronic impulses. For this exhibit, one of the boxes contains some printed images from it.

I remember my time at Eastern Michigan University as particularly electrifying. The people in this exhibit with whom I was fortunate to work could not have been more supportive of my idiosyncratic perspective, more willing to help me learn, or more stimulating in their ability to inspire me. An accurate description of my days there was given in another context by popular author John Straley. Describing such a time, he said, “it was as if the environment had somehow stepped on a third rail.” So it was.

BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST  installation