“Homage — Contemporary Art in Digital Media” is on display through Aug. 21 at the Escondido Arts Partnership Municipal Gallery, 262 E. Grand Ave. From Sept. 11 to Oct. 15 it will also be on display at the Art Institute of California, San Diego.

The exhibition is put on by the Digital Arts Guild, which started locally in 2003 and features members from around the world.

The theme of the exhibit asked the artists to look back and recognize “those whose shoulders we stand on,” said Powegian Joe Nalven, one of the exhibit’s organizers.

Through their statements, the artists had to reference the work of another artist or of a cultural concept, said Nalven.

“It’s about how we make sense of our work,” Nalven said. “Even though we’re part of the new arts, we look back at other artists and their work.”

Nalven also contributes a photograph, “Email Superhighway (aka homage to the future).”

The photo collage depicts a view of the world in which highway signs don’t provide direction, but are filled with SPAM e-mail, taken directly from Nalven’s inbox, a satirical take on the current “plugged-in” world.

Nalven admits he made the photo first and then looked for a match for the homage theme, finding the work of social satirist William Hogarth.

“This was an opportunity for me to have some fun with my art,” he said.

Nalven said he’s been creating collages for 20 years using scissors and glue sticks, but was bothered that you could always see where the pictures had been cut.

“I was looking to get rid of the cut lines, so I started looking at Photoshop to learn how to blend them in,” he said. “It just opened a totally new world and started me on an adventure I didn’t know I was going to be on.”

The exhibition features 49 works, and features work from artists in England, China, Australia and Canada in addition to San Diego artists.

Poway resident Kim Zuill contributed “Hanamachi,” a photograph of a digitally altered flower. Its title, which is Japanese for “flower street,” is the name of the districts where geishas and courtesans live.

The abstract photograph depicts the petals of a flower and are somewhat reminiscent of the work of Georgia O’Keefe though Zuill said the work was not intended as an homage to the artist.

“Most of all my work is sensuous and kind of erotic in a way,” Zuill said in a phone interview from Japan, where she was visiting family.

Zuill, a mother of four, said she began taking photographs 25 years ago, when she got a camera as a Christmas gift and trained herself at first by taking photographs of her children.

“But now that I do photography, my kids are always telling me that I don’t take photos of them anymore,” she said.

For more information on the exhibition, go to www.digitalartguild.com.

Some of Zuill’s work can be found online at her website, www.KimZuill.com.