Debbi Swanson Patrick isn't the first to try her hand at the emerging new art form called scannography, but apparently she's among the best.

This year she won the Grand Prize at the Caltech Art Show for her body of work, entitled "Telling Images," that is currently on display at the Coffee Gallery until the end of the month. On Thursday night Kate Cavellas, curator of art at the Gallery, and Patrick hosted a wine and cheese reception at the Gallery, at which Patrick demonstrated how to make scanner art to a large crowd of nearly 100 people.

"I usually start with some kind of idea or theme and combine different ingredients to go with it and contrast with it," said Patrick. "I arrange the items on the scanner, and sometimes if I only have one of something that I want to use multiple times in the same piece, I move that item from one spot to another as it scans, so it looks like I have several of the same items when I don't."

Patrick said this style of making digital art is gaining popularity fast. She got turned on to it by an 84-year-old man named Ed Martin, a director for Paramount who filmed the first Rolling Stones music video. His daughter lives in Altadena.

"I saw his stuff at an art showing and I just fell over," said Patrick. "His stuff blew me away, it was so different. He took me under his wing, I went to his house and his studio, and he taught me how to do it. He's absolutely amazing and he became my mentor."

Items that can be used in scannography can include anything from flowers to pearls to succulents to plastic army men to necklaces to acorns to food to trinkets; anything you can think of and can fit on a scanner. Patrick said going to sushi restaurants is one of the best sources of material, as well as thrift stores, finding things off the ground, and flea markets.

"You can use anything," she said. "Make a toy box and just have fun with it."

But, Patrick warned, scannography can be very addictive.

"One of the most important things is knowing when to stop," she said, "because you can just keep adding and playing and farting around until you drive yourself crazy.

This reporter is solid proof of Patrick's above statement. Patrick allowed me to create my own image (which is attached to this article) with items that I brought along. I arranged a large kitchen knife atop a toy military helicopter, a toy barbed wire fence, a piece of yellow string, a plastic army man in the crawling position, and a string of gold coins on the scanner. Then as the image was being scanned, I slowly moved a flame around the edges of the items. My piece was a little more political than Patrick's work, but it just goes to show that you have so many options when it comes to scannography arrangements, and how addictive it can be.

"The nice thing though is that this is digital, so you can save what you want," said Patrick. "If you're even questioning, 'Do I like it, I'm not sure,' then save it. Then do something else to it and do something else to it. You're only limited by how much memory you have on your hard drive."

Both Cavellas and Patrick have shown their art at the now-shuttered Gallery at the End of the World for years, and although the Coffee Gallery offers Open Mic Nights on Sundays and Fridays, Stand-Up comedy on Tuesday nights, Sing-a-long's on Wednesday nights, monthly artist displays and shows, and live musical performances in the Backstage venue, they don't think the Coffee  Gallery is quite ready to fill the hole the Ben McGinty left when he closed his art gallery.

"It was not my intention to fill the hole that McGinty left," said Cavellas. "I've been curator here for little over a year and I don't know that anyone can fill that hole, personally, having shown my work there for so many years. It was such a magical thing.

But we do have shows here every month, it's for local and emerging artists, and it is our hope that people can come here and see art that they've never seen before by people who haven't had a chance to show their work before. The Coffee Gallery has a lot of fun events that they're offering, and people are responding to that."

Next Patrick wants to have a box built with thin enough glass to maintain contact with the surface of the scanner, which will allow her to work with oil and water and immerse things in that and use different colors, creating a sense of movement in the background, which she is very excited about.

She also encourages other artists to try their hand at scannography.

"I would absolutely encourage other people to try this kind of art," she said. "It's fun and you just need to have a lot of memory and a good, fast computer, and a good scanner. As well as patience and a sense of fun.  You have to jump in and want to explore. People are looking for a way to express themselves, and I think this is a great way to do it."