'Augmented reality' artist will be featured speaker at AAUW meeting in Murrysville

Award-winning photographer and “augmented reality” artist Christopher Ruane will be the featured speaker at the Thursday meeting of the Murrysville Area American Association of University Women.

“I was messing around with photography ever since I was younger,” Ruane said in a 2014 Tribune-Review interview. “Since I got out of high school, I started entering the (woman’s club) show.”

Ruane said when he first started snapping photos, he was very interested in the trappings of old-school photography.

“At first, I was really interested in the whole tradition and process of it,” he said. “Then, over time I got into digital photography, and that’s when I realized I could make whatever I wanted with Photoshop.”

That is where the “augmented reality” comes in.

Ruane’s photo mash-ups run the gamut from surreal imagery such tropical fish “swimming” between the cables of a Pittsburgh bridge to more serious work, such as Biblical interpretations, one of which earned Ruane the top prize at St. Vincent College’s 2012 National Catholic Arts Competition. Two more of his works were included in a Carnegie Museum exhibit in 2013.

In the past few years, Ruane and his work have been featured in Camera Obscura Journal, Whirl Magazine, the National Catholic News Service, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post.

Ruane has also received awards at the PX3 Prix De La Photographie Paris, The Berlin Foto Bienniale and has exhibited in Barcelona Spain. In 2018 he won “Best Augmented Reality” at the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles.

He has created and launched his own mixed media app titled ARt, available on iTunes and Google Play.

The AAUW meeting is at 9:30 a.m. in the meeting room of the Murrysville Community Library, 4130 Sardis Road in Murrysville. The public is welcome, and there is no cost to attend.

For more, see ChristopherRuane.com or Murrysville-PA-AAUW.net.