Basic Info
Name: William J. Kolomyjec (Dr. Bill)
Country of Origin: US
Description
William J. Kolomyjec was born in Detroit in 1947 and emerged as a pioneering figure in computer art and digital design. He earned his BFA in industrial design from Michigan State University in 1969, followed by an MFA in graphic design in 1975 and a PhD in education in 1980. His academic career took him from teaching engineering and computer graphics at The Ohio State University, where he worked with the Cranston Csuri Research Group, to Northern Illinois University, where he served as Associate Professor of Art and founded the Electronic Media program. He later taught digital media and interactive design at the Art Institute of Tampa and Saint Petersburg College before retiring from academia in 2020.
Kolomyjec began creating computer art at Michigan State in the early 1970s, working with punch cards, FORTRAN code, and mainframe plotters to explore algorithmic form-making. His 1975 MFA exhibition marked the first presentation of computer graphics as fine art at the university. Describing his philosophy as “turning mathematics into images,” he treated the computer as a creative tool no different from traditional media, developing early algorithmic works including Banana Cone, Geese, and Scorpion Spin that explored morphing forms, repetition, and controlled randomness. In 1979 and 1980, he organized Art In, Art Out at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, one of the first major U.S. survey exhibitions of computer art, bringing together international pioneers including Herbert W. Franke, Vera Molnár, and Ken Knowlton.
His career took a significant turn in 1989 when he joined Pixar as RenderMan Evangelist and International Marketing Manager, where he played a pivotal role in advancing the company’s groundbreaking rendering technology, launching the VALIS Group, and contributing to the development of Toy Story edutainment products. Following his tenure at Pixar, he transitioned to learning and development roles at Andersen Consulting and Accenture, where he designed e-learning experiences and training programs, applying his design expertise to corporate education.
Kolomyjec’s work has been exhibited internationally since the 1970s, with notable presentations including Art In/Art Out (1980), 25 Jahre Computerkunst: Grafik, Animation und Technik in Munich (1989), and Ex Machina: Frühe Computergrafik bis 1979 at Kunsthalle Bremen (2007). His plotter drawings entered the collection of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, which featured them in the 2024 exhibition Electric Art. In 2023, Goat Gallery in Toronto presented Plotter Art to Blockchain, a retrospective tracing his evolution from early computational work to blockchain-based media. He has carefully preserved his archive of 1970s plotter drawings, reintroducing them through NFTs and Bitcoin Ordinals, and continues to explore generative art through projects including the Generative Art Vending Machine and collaborations with longtime friend Chris Scussel and with artificial intelligence. In 2024 he participated in the Generative Art Summit in Berlin, organized by the Foundation Herbert W. Franke.
His contributions have been recognized in foundational publications including Franke’s Computer Graphics Computer Art and Ruth Leavitt’s Artist and Computer.
