We recently connected with Travis Vermilye and have shared our conversation below.

Travis, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

There were a number of experiences growing up that added to my desire to want to pursue a creative path as a professional career. As a kid, my parents were both creative people. My mom would sit and color with me often in my Batman coloring books and I’ll always remember that as our special time together. She is an amazing seamstress and created costumes for me and my brothers almost every Halloween. I remember (or remember photos of) costumes as Batman, Burt and Ernie, Teen Wolf, and Dracula. She also painted folk art wooden pieces for decoration around the house. My Dad was always making us things like wooden guns or swords to play with or building things for us. When VHS camcorders came out, I remember my Dad spending hours making stop-motion videos or overdubbing voice tracks on videos of us. I definitely owe my creative beginnings to my parents.

In high school, I had a couple of wonderful art teachers who were encouraging and challenged me to push myself creatively. I don’t know that I would have gone to college and studied art without their influence. When I was in school, we didn’t have as many options for classes as a lot of schools have today. There was basically just art class. I was lucky though to have one teacher who decided to teach a commercial art class. We did things like create signs and illustrations that communicate an idea for an audience or client. That was my first introduction to the commercial world of art and the idea that it could actually be a career.

The biggest thing that influenced my art career and really the first time I felt a fire in my belly about being a professional artist happened after high school when I was working at a small sign shop. This was in the early 90s. One of our clients was a graphic designer and I had to stop by her office (her home office!) for some reason – to pick something up or drop something off – and while I was there I was watching her at work on her Apple Macintosh computer. Up until then, I had only heard about them and seen them on TV or in movies. I had a Commodore 128 at home that my parents were nice enough to get me, and later an IBM PC. I’d messed around in Windows Paint, but that is about it for graphics programs. As I stood behind the graphic designer and watched her erasing a large section of an image in Adobe Photoshop, I was mesmerized. I was hooked. I knew at that moment that whatever I did in my life, I wanted to work on computers using creative software tools like that. I wanted to work for myself and I wanted to work from home.

Looking back now, it feels a little silly to have been so excited about just erasing something digitally, but that was where it started for me. I’ve been an Apple fanboy ever since then and technology is always a large part of the work I create – mostly from my home office/studio on my Apple iMac Pro.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a digital and mixed media artist creating work inspired by science and the natural world. I’m also a professor in the Digital Design and Illustration areas at the University of Colorado Denver.

For almost 20 years, I was practicing as a medical illustrator and animator and was lucky enough to see my work appear in the New York Times, on the Oprah Winfrey Show, in museums, and in numerous publications. I worked with some amazing clients and for some great companies that helped improve people’s healthcare experience with educational models and graphics. Now I use many of the techniques and technologies from my medical illustration days to create imagery and animated pieces about a personal love of mine – tiny microorganisms such as lichen and slime mold as well as small sea creatures like nudibranchs that exhibit amazing colors and shapes. I’m also interested in activist work and have been getting more into that recently. In particular, I have been thinking a lot about plastic pollution, both on land and in the ocean, and trying to find ways to communicate this in my work.

Making my imagery almost always involves 3D modeling, animation, or both, and I often use generative digital tools to create realistic growth patterns and lifelike networks in my imagery. Most recently, I have been learning some of the techniques in Unreal Engine to produce real-time renders of my 3D creations. I even teach an introduction class at CU Denver each fall. I also have an interest in AR/VR/XR technologies and have incorporated these into some of my work as an additional level of exploration and immersion.

I enjoy being part of the Denver art scene and learning more about it as I become more immersed in it. To that end, I have become involved with some local organizations doing some pretty amazing things. I’m a member of EDGE Contemporary Art Gallery in Lakewood at the 40 West Arts Hub where I show work in a solo show once per year as well as in group shows on occasion. I’m a new member of the Artnauts – an artist collective that uses the visual arts as a tool for addressing global issues while connecting with artists from around the world, and I serve on the board for Denver Digerati – a local nonprofit that supports artists working in digital animation and motion art.

With my work, I try to keep an open mind and be on the lookout for new opportunities, venues to show work, and ways to collaborate with other artists in the area (hit me up if you want to work on something together!). In the spirit of collaboration, a pretty cool project I worked on recently is a documentary film about Awadagin Pratt, a well-known pianist who has created a production called Black in America. My friend and colleague at CU Denver Michelle Carpenter created the documentary and I contributed by creating the introduction animated sequence. Mine is a small contribution to the overall project, but I’m really proud of the work and the message behind the piece. “Awadagin Pratt: Black in America” is showing on numerous PBS stations across the country this February during black history month, including Rocky Mountain PBS, and the production has already been selected for screening by some wonderful national and international film festivals. You can learn more about it at https://www.blackinamerica.life/

Finally, I am so honored to have four large pieces in an exhibit at the Arvada Center for the Art + Science Exhibit from January 19 – March 26, 2023. If you’re in the area, I’ll be doing an artist talk there with some of the other incredible artists in the show at 1 PM on March 12th.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, I think the most rewarding thing about being an artist is the opportunity to pursue whatever I choose in terms of creative outlet and the work I produce. It’s also incredibly challenging at times. I tend to hop around in my work, pursuing different themes, and trying out new techniques or new software tools in order to reach a desired outcome. Something about myself that it took me some time to learn, is that the act of learning something new is very much a part of my personal drive. The challenge of getting a new tool or technique to actually create what I want it to create, working through the frustrations along the way, and ending up with something I am happy with is part of what makes me excited about the work I do. I’ve also come to notice that when I am in between projects and searching for what comes next, that is when I feel kind of lost and a little sad. The act of making and working toward some idea or concept, the experimentation that goes along with it, and the trial and error along the way make the creative journey enjoyable and worth the effort.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I’ve dabbled with the NFT world a bit and have sold a few of my pieces this way. If you’re following it at all, you’re probably aware of the bubble that basically popped. I think this has left a lot of people feeling negative about NFTs and that’s understandable. Personally, I think they are here to stay. There are many NFT platforms out there and they’re not all about the money grab. A lot of them are doing unique and creative things in ways that actually help the environment vs hurting it or supporting other causes for good (https://doingud.com/, for example). Love them, hate them, or just feel indifferent to them, my belief is that we will continue to see new and innovative projects and products in the NFT space for years to come.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.travisvermilye.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travis.vermilye/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tvermilye/
• Other: https://vimeo.com/tvermilye

Image Credits
The three photos of me are by Alicia Vermilye