"In Memoriam: Roman Verostko, Digital Art Pioneer"
by Edmond Allmond

Roman Verostko, a pioneer in digital art, died on 1 June 2024, at the age of 94.

He was born Joseph Verostko on 12 Sept. 1929, in Tarrs, PA, to John Frank Verostko and Mary Veronica Balcik. His education began at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh; he entered monastic life in 1950, on his 21st birthday, at St. Vincent Monastery, formally changing his name to Roman.
Verostko received degrees from St. Vincent College and Seminary before his ordination in 1959. He studied at New York University and Columbia University and completed his M.F.A. at Pratt Institute in 1961.

He left the priesthood in 1968 and married Alice Wagstaff, a child psychologist and educator. They moved to Minneapolis, where he was appointed to the humanities faculty of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He later served as academic dean, chair of the Liberal Arts Department, and professor emeritus in 1994.

In 1970, Verostko was introduced to the Control Data Institute and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He spent the next ten years converting his Minneapolis studio into an “electronic scriptorium,” developing computer-driven robotic arms that held pens, pencils, or brushes, producing his now-famous signature works.
His travels to China as a professor in 1985 and 1998, following his initial visit in 1982, profoundly influenced his artistic expression, deepening his interest in semiotics.

Verostko pioneered the application of computers in art, receiving honors for his groundbreaking work, including an honorary mention for the Prix Ars Electronica (1993), the Golden Plotter first prize in Gladbeck, Germany (1994), the Recommendatory Prize from ARTEC’95 in Nagoya, Japan, and the SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement (2009). He was inducted into the inaugural class of the SIGGRAPH Academy in 2018.

His work appeared in more than 100 exhibitions globally, most recently “Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and “Coder le Monde” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Andrew Julo, director of the Verostko Center for the Arts and curator of the Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections, said in a press release from St. Vincent, “Decades before computational technology would revolutionize global society, Roman recognized the power and promise of algorithmic procedure, inviting us to see the world in its increasing complexity as worthy of our investigation and reverence. . . . Roman shaped the conversation around art and algorithms.”

“If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have continued with programming languages!” Verostko told me in an August 2022 interview.
Father Paul Taylor, O.S.B., PhD, president of Saint Vincent College, described Mr. Verostko as “the best of what a liberal arts education offers; the chance to learn and interpret what life can be. Saint Vincent has always been Roman’s home, and his passing represents a profound loss for those who knew him.”

Edmond Allmond

Image Credit: Courtesy of the The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD)