Beginnings
Drawing came first. “At the age of 2 I was holding a pencil properly mimicking my father at the drawing board,” he told Depthcore in 2008. Paint, charcoal, ink and clay came before any software.
The move to the computer started with Visual Basic. He was writing small programs for AOL and wanted to make the splash screens that came with them. That is also when the name Cugar arrived, from an image he had of “a very powerful mythical catlike creature.” These were the AOL years: dial-up, splash screens and 800×600 wallpapers.
The abstract work of Mike, known as ink, of inkdesign.com, pushed him toward digital abstraction. He began in Bryce 3D and Photoshop, then moved to 3ds Max. He was 16, and making digital art a year before cugardesign.com went online.
“cugardesign, Jonathan forester, HUGE influence on me in college ~2002”
cugardesign
cugardesign.com was online by August 1999. Over the next few years it carried his abstract 3D work, desktop wallpapers, illustrations and small web design jobs, rebuilt several times along the way.
The 2001 version of the site is now in the Web Design Museum, listed among the turn-of-the-millennium sites it calls the Metalheart aesthetic. Two of his wallpapers from that year, Form and Industria 1, are in the museum’s collection of the Cubadust wallpaper series. The Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute dates the Metalheart style to about 1998 to 2004 and files it together with Depthcore, the collective he joined in 2002.
In the abstract work, 3D is the starting structure and Photoshop does most of the work. “I use 3d as a skeleton,” he said, and “Photoshop is probably 80% of what my pieces are composed of.” A piece can take months, picked up for one or two details at a time, or worked on for hours when an idea lands.
Most titles are Latin. He chose it because it is “the root of many languages,” and because he does not want “an idea to be immediately defined by a name.” The viewer gets to decide what the image is about.
He has described the archive as a diary: “My journal is my artwork. When I look back on my work its a timeline of my life.”
In 2008 he moved to atleastwedream.com, where the work has lived since. cugardesign.com now redirects here.
cugardesign in 2001, Web Design MuseumCubadust wallpapersArchived versionsMetalheart, CARI
Artist statement
I have found comfort and serenity in escapism through different mediums ever since I can remember. Always to be a recluse, quiet and in the constant realms of my head.
These realms build upon love, fear, death, life and lust that I cannot render through words. My interpretations are of only mere sketches to what I cannot describe inside me.Building layer upon layer, obsessing over detail upon detail, my creations come to life after many months of hard work. Through this progression my thoughts and emotions change, and my work will evolve but in the end its core is still intact.
This is just me, attempting to communicate myself through pieces that grow more detailed and time-consuming as I myself grow, change, learn and experience our shared course.
Transition
From 2010 he put his focus on getting the digital work seen in person, as large prints at galleries and live events around Indianapolis, and in 2011 at a Depthcore exhibition at Agenda in New York. The shows are listed in the Record.
From 2009 to 2021, twelve years, he stepped away from making digital work, illustrating and painting instead. In 2021 he came back to digital and 3D, and these four pieces are where that return starts: figures beginning to come out of the abstract forms, made in Photoshop and After Effects.
What other artists have said
“In terms of my abstract, I’ve always wanted to be Jonathan Forester … His 3D is still amazingly fresh and innovative…”
Record
Sites, releases, shows, press and recognition, 1999 to now. Most entries link to their source.
- 1999
- 2000Recognitioncoolstop.com, “cool of the cool sites of the month”, October 17FeatureInterview on plasmainteractive, NovemberCommissionSplash page for halfproject.com
- 2001
- 2002ReleaseCubadust “versus” project, alongside Chapter3, Force Feed Swede, Renascent and othersWayback Machine
- 2003
- 2005
- 2007
- 2008
- 2009PublicationDigital Arts magazine, August, “Abstract power” feature
- 2010
- 2011ExhibitionFirst Friday at the Indy Indie Artist Colony with Sarah Boyle and Michael Arbuckle, AugustFacebook
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2018
- 2021
Tools
- Abstract, 2001–2013
- Bryce 3D, 3ds Max, Photoshop
- Transition, 2021
- Photoshop, 3ds Max, After Effects
- Figurative, 2021 to now
- DAZ Studio, Cinema 4D, ZBrush, Octane, Photoshop, After Effects