B i o

David Em was born in Los Angeles in 1952. When he was a year old his family moved to South America, where he grew up.

At seventeen he studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy in Philadelphia. Later he attended Goddard College in Vermont and the American Film Institute in Hollywood.

Em created his first digital image at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1975. From 1977 to 1989 he was the Artist in Residence at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where he built virtual worlds.

He worked with desktop computers in 1990 at Apple's Evangelism Lab. In 1994 he set up his own studio in Sierra Madre, California.

His art has been published and exhibited in books and museums.

To read his introduction to the book The Art of David Em about his early work, click here.

To read a poem about him by Ray Bradbury, click here.