A Lybrook Son

Boulder artist Jon Lybrook fairly calls himself an artist, printmaker and technologist, because his work — something he has named luminograms — is most certainly a mixture of art and science. And maybe some other kind of alchemical magic, inspired by the late film-maker Stan Brakhage, whose 16mm experimental films pioneered similar techniques of direct manipulation of film surfaces.

Lybrook, however, carries it into the modern realm: Though he starts in the darkroom, treating silver-based film with chemicals, he goes on to scan the abstract images into large-format transparencies that he tweaks and turns into digital prints.

“I like to use the forms created naturally and enrich the inherent colors... without imposing too much of my own editing on the piece,” he says. A lot of what he ends up with is chance: “They’re like Zen paintings. There’s no going over it again, like you can with pastels or oils. At one certain point, it’s done.”

The results include everything from luscious lava-lamp-esque color fields to Photoshopped photo images enmeshed in abstractions; all you have to do is gaze. An exhibition of Lybrook’s large 24-x-30-inch prints mounted on canvas goes on display today at Hapa Sushi, 1117 Pearl Street in Boulder, and continues through September 30. For information, go to jonlybrook.com. — By Susan Froyd