Black Art & Design Juried Student Exhibition: Darryl Wedgeworth

Darryl Wedgeworth

Glitch art is just one of the varied creative styles to be found in the Black Art & Design Juried Student Exhibition at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Darryl Wedgeworth ’24 (Communication Design) explains his creative process and his experience at MIAD so far.

In “When Are Errors Good?,” originally created for a typography class, Wedgeworth makes great use of glitch art. “I specifically looked at the different typefaces that they use a lot in glitch art,” he says, ultimately choosing Microsoft Sans and Times New Roman as typefaces. Using Photoshop for the background image, Wedgeworth “did a bunch of glitched-out uses with the different typefaces using the common ‘error 404’ code.”

Wedgeworth’s second piece, “Timeless,” involved an intensive and time-consuming process of layering images and recreating the final piece pixel by pixel. “I knew it was going to look good in the end, so I just went along with it,” he says. “A lot of my artistic practice stems from messing around in Photoshop and just trying different filters and things like that and I compile them all together in these different images,” he says.

“When Are Errors Good?” by Darryl Wedgeworth

In his third year at MIAD, Wedgeworth appreciates the variety and flexibility of Communication Design coursework available to students. “MIAD really prepares you to work at a design agency … you can pick and choose what avenue you want to go down,” he explains. Although he transferred to MIAD as a sophomore, Wedgeworth started building community and opportunities for himself immediately. He currently works as an elementary school art teacher, guiding 1st – 3rd graders through art projects like origami after school. “My experience from being at MIAD in general helped me get that job,” he says.

As an artist, Wedgeworth enjoys exploring “dark contrasting colors with bright, vibrant colors,” a combination which lends itself well to glitch art. During a high school graphic design program, he discovered he loved making bold designs–sometimes too bold. “My instructor would try to get me to dial it back because they were so crazy and so wild,” he laughs. Now, his process begins with bold choices. “I start with crazy different colors and go from there. That works well for me,” he says.

View Darryl’s work in the MIAD Black Art & Design Juried Student Exhibition, which is open to the public on MIAD’s first floor in the Community Hub (room 160) and runs until March 1. Keep up with Darryl on Instagram and learn more about MIAD’s Communication Design major!