ABOUT PAUL MCLEAN [ARTIST BIOGRAPHY]

Paul McLean is a recent graduate of Claremont Graduate University (MFA in Digital Media and MA in Arts and Cultural Management from the Drucker/Ito School of Management) and holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame (English with a Fine Arts concentration, 1986). He is currently pursuing his doctorate in Media and Communications at The European Graduate School [Saas-Fee, Switzerland]. In 2009 McLean was selected as one of nine American artists to sit on the NEA/Federal Arts Policy online panel forum hosted by WESTAF. Since 2005 he has exhibited as a solo artist (Yarger|Strauss Contemporary/Timothy Yarger Fine Arts in Beverly Hills, which currently represents McLean, and at St. Edward's University in Austin), in group shows (with Glenn Goldberg and NYC Artists at Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis), collective productions (ART FOR HUMANS GALLERY CHINATOWN, LA), international art fairs (LA Art Show and Bridge Berlin with YSC/TYFA, and SCOPE Basel/Miami, NY plus others with Perpetual Art Machine), and in virtual projects (Rhizome's ArtBase and AFH "HUM 10+1"), in addition to completing his thesis exhibits at CGU. In May of 2009, McLean completed the BETA version of a thesis text, under the tutelage of Joseph Maciariello, the world's authority on management guru Peter Drucker, with whom Maciariello collaborated for decades. McLean is now translating his thesis [now Transthesis] into multi-dimensional formats. The text is titled "'I Love You, Monster' - The End of Organization Man & the Epistemological Age." The primary focus of current work, as a precursor for dissertation, is the neo-illuminated manuscript "Notes on Dimensional Time." In September 2010, McLean will help launch an LA-based collective [Gramática Parda, Lead Artist: Joe Merrell], whose first expo will open at ANDLAB.

McLean is currently expanding his virtual network of sites (Nexus: www.artforhumans.com), integrating into or expanding the site infrastructure to accommodate Web 2.0/3.0 (Cloud) computing innovations, as well as open source-based Digital Humanites technologies, methodologies and protocols. Since 2006 McLean has established and maintained AFH adjuncts on Flickr, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Linkedin, Etsy and Ning. His first major [published] website was created in conjunction with exhibits in Scotland in 1995-6 and hosted by long-defunct Internet portal The Electric Frog on the Royal Mile of Edinburgh, Scotland. Upcoming or long-term projects include a sequence of exhibits and artist actions (also entitled "I Love You, Monster" or "1000 Revolutionary Actions), which will culminate in an original American opera inspired by Wagner's Ring Cycle.

In a career spanning 25+ years, McLean has developed an array of artist skills - in New and Traditional Media - while maintaining a vibrant studio practice. Although painting is still his prime expressive tool, McLean also produces digital works [for web, animation and print], music and sound sculpture, camera-based art (still and moving image), performance and installation projects for exhibition in museums, galleries, performance venues, the web and alternative art spaces. In particular, McLean's digital print work has been groundbreaking, beginning with a major exhibit of prints on canvas, with additive elements, in 1997. In 2004 the artist was selected to be one of the first artists-in-residence at the Morris Graves Foundation. McLean's arts activism helped the achievement of percent for public art legislation in Nashville in 2001. McLean has written extensively about dimensional art praxis, and his writings and reviews have been published in print dailies, weeklies, and monthly periodicals, as well as online in blogs [since 2000]. He is co-founder of and a frequent contributor to Cantanker Magazine in Austin, Texas. McLean hosted art talk radio programs in Santa Fe and Nashville, and has interviewed arts luminaries such as Richard Tuttle, Herb and Dorothy Vogel and Frank Stella. In the field of contemporary collective arts, few artists have accomplished more than McLean. He has produced four collectives [DDDD, 01, Art for Humans and the Journeyman Project]. Collaborators have included Roy Wooten, John Guider, Glenn Goldberg, Sharon Gilchrist, Christian Moeller, John Mulvany and many others. Computer-centric informants, collaborators and friends (former and active) include Stephen Miller, Jennifer Niederst and Donald Ashworth Cox III. McLean's pioneering work has been rigorously not-covered by the bi-coastal establishment art press, with the exception of Artnet, but has been commented on extensively and generally complimentarily in viral virtual networks. After a friendly meeting at the Armory show in 2003, attending a lecture in 2005 at ArtHouse in Austin, and reading his columns for years, McLean engaged in a vigorous e-correspondence with Jerry Saltz, which ended many thousands of words (mostly McLean's) later with the artist calling Mr. Saltz a bad name. McLean is, however, friends with David Pagel and Guy Cross, and is cordial with Peter Frank. McLean's logistical training includes stints at LA Packing Crating & Transport, Elaine Horwitch Galleries, and Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe. McLean's first "art" business [FunkshunArt, 1982-7] was a painted clothing line that was sold in Unique Boutique and the American T-shirt Gallery (NYC), Commander Salamander (Washington, DC) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago). Production experience includes projects with MCA Publishing Studio (King Williams), Ground Zero (Lee Harris Tucker and others), Team Design (Ellen Rudick), Woodland Studios (Robert Solomon), the Nashville Ballet, Emma, Ambiance and Chromatics (in Nashville); Harvest printing (Riverside, CA), and Pop Cling (Costa Mesa). Project sponsorship includes (ca. 2000-4) MCSi, TIAA Cref, CB Richard Ellis, Citation Soundstage, the William Morris Agency, the Nashville International Film Festival/Film and Video Association and many others. McLean's work has been collected by Brooks & Dunn, Montgomery Gentry, Tobey Keith, Keith Urban and the Sunrise Museum in Charleston, WV.