"You Really Are What You Eat"
Erika received her Bachelor degree in Arts and Art Education from the Universidade Federal de Uberlandia in Uberlandia, M.G., Brazil. She went on to gain her Master degree (in 1992) and Ph.D (in 1995) in Art Education and Computer Graphics from Ohio State University and the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, also in Ohio. In 1994, she earned a Crabbie Award. Her computer-generated artwork has been exhibited in the USA, Japan, Brazil, and Slovenia. Her recent posts include: a member of the SIGGRAPH-99 International Committee, Chairman of the Social Communication Department, Advertising and Journalism, at the Universidade de Uberaba from 2000 through 2003. Although her permanent address is in Ohio, she currently is a member of the visiting faculty at the Universidade de Uberaba in Brazil. Erika gives credit to those who contributed to the creation of her work: John E. Chadwick (poems), Ismar da Paz Silva (painting of the bodies), and Michael A. Maloof (kids drawings). For her works, "You Really Are What You Eat" and "Digitally Excluded," the final products are photographs of digital images created in Photoshop 4.0.1. Photographs, photographs of traditional artwork, and children's drawings were scanned and used. The images were manipulated using Photoshop software creating a digital collage. Without digital technology this work could not have been created because all scanned images, once inside the computer, were resized, the colors changed, put through filters and generally rearranged and reorganized to express the artist's vision in a way which would not have been possible using non-digital tools.