Zachary Ryan Daly

I’m indecisive in art - what to make, what tools to use, what genres to lean into. So in response, I pick up a little of everything for whatever comes at hand.

I grew up with all kinds of art & writing influences, such as goth writers, experimental filmmakers, and traditional landscape artists. As I pursued a college education, I picked up even more inspiration from broader cultural and social representation as I learned more about all the different artistic voices that are out there.

I earned a Bachelor's Degree in Art with an emphasis in Multimedia in December 2017, and a Master’s in Multimedia with a Concentration in Interaction Design in June 2020. My BA capstone was a multimedia exhibit utilizing as many different types of art I had learned up to that point in time, and thematically representing as wide a range of social, political, and humanitarian views. For my MA thesis, I designed a prototype hybrid AR/physical board game themed on disaster survival & preparedness, which by no small (completely unintentional) coincidence was a project I presented to my thesis committee barely three months into the Covid lockdown.

My art changed drastically in the 2020s. A pandemic, civil and international wars, nationalist terrorism in the US, and the collapse of basic things like food and medical access all made me see parallels to the equally disordered world of the 1910s and 1920s, the time when the surrealist movement was born in Paris. These artists’s paintings, drawings, films, and sculptures that others saw as nonsense were their reaction to the bizarre world they were living in. The modern world of the 2020s shares many similarities, most notably artistic expression joining hands with freedom of expression in the battle against oppressive control of authoritarianism.

Make some art, damnit. One might as well.