Michael Jacobs is a visual artist based in Rochester, Minnesota whose practice spans traditional drawing media and computational image systems. After a 40-year career in engineering, he returned to fine art with a focus on structured, process-driven image construction.

His work includes charcoal, watercolor, ink, and pastel alongside Diamojism — an original art form he conceived and built, in which canonical works from art history are reconstructed entirely from emoji. Each work is assembled from thousands of individually selected diamond-shaped tiles, chosen by a custom rendering pipeline for color, edge structure, and spatial complexity. No generative AI is involved at any stage.

Across both practices, Jacobs is concerned with how images shift when translated across different material and symbolic systems — and what survives that translation. His recent work re-examines key works from art history through the visual language of contemporary digital communication.

He is an exhibiting member of the SEMVA Art Gallery in Rochester, Minnesota, where he also serves on the executive board.

Exhibitions

SEMVA Art Gallery, Rochester Minnesota

Exhibiting Member, Executive Board Member and Treasurer of the Southeastern Minnesota Visual Artist (SEMVA) cooperative gallery in Rochester, Minnesota with many framed pieces on exhibit and for sale.

2023-Present

Med City Art Festival, Rochester Minnesota

Gallery 24, Guest Artist, Rochester Minnesota

Rochester Community Technical College, Solo Student Exhibition