Joel
Hagen is a California artist who divides his time between painting, sculpting,
and computer graphics. He is a four-time recipient of the World Science
Fiction conference award for three dimensional art. His computer animations
have received First Place and Grand Prize awards in national competition,
and his astronomical paintings have been published in various books and
magazines. He has written articles and a monthly column on computer graphics
for publications in the United States, Greece and Germany. Hagen has been
a guest instructor at the Summer Arts program at Humboldt and at Cal Arts
in Valencia.
Hagen's work has been exhibitaed at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum,
The Delaware Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum, and the Gagarin Center in
Moscow. His work has been featured in three PBS documentaries: "Visions
of Other Worlds," 1984, "Contact: The Search for Extra-terrestrial
Life," 1987, and "Space Visions," 1988. His work has more
recently been seen on "Cosmic Safari" (TLC) and "Space Millenium"
(NHK Japan).
Hagen's academic background is in anthropology, graduating with a BS from
Cal State Stanislaus. In the 1980's, Hagen organized projects exploring
the nature of the creative process in which scientists, artists and writers
collaborated on exercises in disciplined imagination (Smithsonian, March
1982). He has carried on this concept as one of the founders of the annual
CONTACT conference (OMNI, October, 1992).
An advocate of international space efforts, Hagen was a participant in
the symposium, "Human Factors in Space Habitats" at the 1986
meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology. In 1987 he presented "Design
Considerations for Orbital Space Habitats" at the "Case For Mars"
conference. In 1993, his use of personal computers to explore historic
data was part of the San Juan institute's Planetary Data Visualization
conference. In 1995, he was a guest of Tufts University, presenting these
visualization techniques at their "2020" conference. Hagen is
a founding member and past vice president of the International Association
of Astronomical Artists. Hagen teaches computer graphics at Modesto Junior
College and does imaging work for NASA Ames.
