Mandi Blais started with Leveller in 1999, using it over the years to help produce novel abstract and surrealistic works. Whether a piece is complex or simple, she always manages to provoke emotion.   Hive Mandi made a heightfield with Leveller's Line filter, imported it into World Machine, did a screen capture, and then manipulated it in Photoshop. The result is a study in contrasts and an intriguing dynamism: stare at the picture, and it seems to warp and shift. The image is bold and suggests a frustrating inability for one to perceive order. Our eyes follow and track the regular grid, but as they look around, they cannot escape either the local or global distortions inherent in the environment. What is familiar is alien. We think we know what we are looking at, but we do not. We think we can make sense of things, but we cannot. The best we can hope for is acceptance, to just let our eyes look and appreciate what they see on its own terms. Cave Like Hive, the eye struggles to find a resting spot but cannot, courtesy of the Escher-like shift between walls and floors. It captures the distorted, shifting spaces of a dream. A place we've all been, but where? The Blight Done with Leveller's Round Checkers plug-in, Terragen, and Photoshop. Not quite sure what the puzzle texture communicates, but if that creates an air of mystery, then it's interestingly appropriate in a self-fulfilling way. Or perhaps we could solve our puzzles if only we could see them clearly. The regular checker pattern hints at order and a solution, but as we delve into it, we find frustrating blights of disorder. A metaphor for the struggle to understand reality? As always, Mandi visualizes the philosophical in interesting ways. Surrealism #4 After using the Lines filter, a round area was stenciled out in Photoshop and the result duplicated and transformed. The stark grayscale coloration accents the feeling of terror at, after valiantly struggling to see beyond, there is only more of the same. Iron Age Surrealism #6