Pong. Adamson, however, had worked with computers since 1978. When the Macs arrived, he set them up, and the printmaker and the painter began exploring what was then state-of-the-art technology: 128K memory, black-and-white, quarter-inch pixels, the MacPaint program created by Bill Atkinson, and a drawing program that was only slightly better than the Etch-A-Sketch children’s toy.
Those attributes, pedestrian by today’s standards, thrilled them both. “I was convinced the Mac was a tool for the arts because it was so visual and icon-based,” says Adamson. “That’s the way artists think. And I was sure that we were only at the beginning of an incredible evolution.” He quickly mastered the machine and became a developer for Apple, writing several early programs. That summer Adamson traveled to California to meet Apple’s leaders, including Steven Jobs and Guy Kawasaki. Those connections soon proved unexpectedly beneficial.
For Newman, the Mac wasn’t just a tool; it was “like a mir-acle.” A vigorous, athletic person, he was struggling to come to terms psychologically with the disease that was slowly stealing his physical capabilities. After weathering a series of temporary vision problems, he had begun having difficulty maintaining his balance. Waning strength meant he could no longer carry a bag full of teaching materials for his drawing class from his car to the Corcoran. After talking with doctors, he grudgingly acknowledged that further limitations were likely to come.
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- Newman’s assistants Use Spray paint for the underpainting of The NASA Space Mural/Hubba Bubba, 2001
Making Magic
- Ferdinand Protzman
The Corcoran College of Art and Design’s computer department, one of the first ever created by an art school, got its unofficial start in the vacuum-cleaner section of a Washington department store in early 1984, when David Adamson, a printmaking teacher, ordered two newly released Apple Macintosh personal computers. One was for him, the other for his colleague William Newman, a teacher of drawing and painting.
The two men had different personal and professional reasons for wanting a Mac. Adamson, a sculptor turned lithographer, had an experimental bent and was fascinated by computer technology and its potential as a tool for making art. Newman, nationally known for his offbeat but immaculately crafted figurative paintings and drawings, had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1979 and was looking for ways to compensate for his eroding motor skills.
Although they had worked together and respected each other, Newman and Adamson were not close friends when they bought their Macs. The purchase would launch an enduring artistic and educational collaboration, as well as a personal friendship. It would also make the Corcoran a leader in using computers to make art and propel Adamson into heading one of America’s major Iris print studios. But before all that happened, the two had to figure out what a Mac could do.
“David told me I needed to buy this machine I’d never heard about,” Newman says. “So I said, okay, I’ll buy it if you say so, but what do you do with it?” Adamson wasn’t entirely sure. But Ridley Scott’s Orwellian television commercial touting Macs as the key to a bright future of creative freedom had kindled his enthusiasm. “I saw that and immediately decided I had to have one,” Adamson says. “But there weren’t any computer stores back then. The only place in town where you could order Macs was through the vacuum-cleaner department at Hecht’s. I think Bill and I got the first two sold in Washington.”
Before Newman acquired his Mac, his computer experience consisted of owning the video game
