Terry Halladay     “Most, if not all, of my work started as essentially private undertakings, and the fact that a few of the images I have made have entertained, amused, or intrigued someone other than me in that process is still a wonderment to me.”      Terry Halladay says he has the “genuine pleasure of being an older dog that’s managed to get his feet off the ground with a new trick.”  But at 48, Terry could hardly be described as old and his tricks are certainly clever. He and his wife, Laura, have spent almost twenty years in New Haven Connecticut, where he has worked in the rare books business and, in recent years, steadily strengthened as a 3D artist.  Though he studied science and mathematics in school, Terry found a different vocation in the world of rare books and manuscripts about 25 years ago.  “The path I took between those two poles was incredibly convoluted and can only be explained as one of those ‘late-sixties’ sorts of things, including graduate school, some teaching, some free-lance photography, as close a call with enlistment in the Navy as is possible without actually shipping out, and a job in a book shop during a one semester hiatus when I needed to raise money for the next semester.”  The free-lance photography drew Terry from a purely aesthetic appreciation of art as an observer, into participation as a creator of art. “I found, or rather was told, that I had a pretty good knack at what could only be described as the ‘street documentary’ type of photography…the black and white and gritty, confrontational, in-your-face sort of thing.”  Eventually, however, a time came when the particular mindset he needed for his edgy photography disappeared and Terry moved on.  Use of computers at the office in the early 90’s resulted in the purchase of a PC and Terry’s first look into the “new world of interactive media.”  Then, “in late 1996, while doing my weekend compulsive new bookshop browsing, I happened on that still highly useful and remarkably comprehensive book by Peter Plantec, the trueSpace2 Bible, bought it, and took it home for my first taste of trueSpace.”  Over the past two years, a sort of seriousness has fallen over his work; a point where images became projects not ‘throwaways.’ “I think that seriousness is the only barometer by which I am most able to gauge the change that has taken place since those early experiments. I can point to the first image where all the modeling was mine, the image where I finally felt I had begun to come to grips with texturing, the image where volumetrics finally created the effect I had in my mind’s eye.” Terry sees working with 3d art as both a solitary and a communal activity — isolated individuals grappling with their own ideas and endeavoring to make them visually concrete, and along the way joining together with other practitioners in finding solutions and assistance in overcoming the elusiveness of their work.  There is no shortage of ideas about projects or series Terry would like to get to, or add to. He also mentions that a trickle of job offers has kept his eyes open to the possibilities of some commercial projects and a free-lance artist’s future. “The only certainty is that I’d like to start to progress toward that point where I might actually be able to say that I have a glimmer of understanding about what it is that I am doing.” As the symbiosis of art and technology continues to improve and advance, though likely occasionally erring off on odd tangents in the blind pursuit of profit, Terry believes, “possibilities for the genuine enrichment of the aesthetic and intellectual dimensions of our lives will most likely take forms we’ve barely even begun to dream about.”    One Man Show Index Email Terry  Visit Terry's Website