Born in Santa Ana, California in 1961, and educated in an eclectic patchwork stretching across North America – Stilley is a child of the Space Age – with all the bizarre baggage that entails. Stilley is a veteran intermedia artist and ‘distinguished alumni’ of Massachusetts College of Art and Design where he was a member of the infamous Studio for Interrelated Media.
During the 80’s – with technology a moving force in art, Stilley worked with the The Cube at the Media Lab, MIT. As fixtures in Boston’s media arts scene, he and his partner Lindsay Mofford moved freely between academia, technology , corporate, public and the underground – producing works shown at The MFA, ART, BFVF, Harvard, Mobius, Brattle, Eventworks, various public television – and the many clubs and lofts that characterized the vibrant underground arts scene of that period.
Since then Stilley has worked primarily in Los Angeles as a media artist, sound designer and film editor.
Diagnosed with the ‘Ice Bucket’ Disease (ALS/MND) in 2005, Stilley is now completely paralyzed and now uses his eyes to control a hybrid computer system to speak, surf and create what LA Times describes as ‘breathtaking images of the frailty and strength of the human condition.
Stilley’s recent work has been made in collaboration with sophisticated generative software, but despite it’s obvious machine origins It continues to be amazingly organic and playful – often served up on a bed of conceptual irony.
Aided by a revolving krewe of artstars, technicians and family members Tucker lives ‘in’ the Net – drawing inspiration, raw source materials for his work and reaching out to a broad and deep community of friends and research and development partners following his work – work that brings together a wide cross-section of maximalist post-post modernism, ranging from whimsical media collage to hard generative abstract with stops along the way for conceptual process-art – and the simply beautiful mistakes.