Phil McAlary studied visual art at schools in New York City and Michigan. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from Otis Art Instute in Los Angeles. He has been a photography enthusiast since his early teen years and was influenced by his mother Adelia who enjoyed photographing and filming family events.
He has exhibited works of digital art based on photographs and mixed media, shown at The Sloan School at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Cambridge Art Association. He has created performance work using chemiluminescent light on Upper Mystic Lake, Winchester, MA (Mystic Luminescent Eve), and at the Christian Herter Center in Brighton, MA (Festival of Light). He employed variously colored smoke during First Night 1977. Phil interned at Cambridge Community Television, Cambridge, MA in the mid-1980's where he taught and produced original videos. He has taught printmaking at the MIT Student Art Association and has shown both digital prints and traditional prints at MIT. He has also taught visual art courses at The Art Institute of Boston and Mount Ida College.
He participated in the Boston Camera Club and displayed art work and photography in several galleries. His photos have appeared on-line in Postcard Poems and Prose, and on websites including Massachusetts Cultural Council, Wagner Society of Boston, and Carpenter Poets of Eastern Massachusetts. Phil enjoys making photographs of varied subject matter, many of which include the natural environment or abstract imagery that combine natural forms. He is a past member of Cambridge Community Television, The Boston Visual Artists Union and Boston Film and Video Foundation.
