Power outages may mean dreaded hours of boredom to some, but to Mike Nourse and his friends there was only one logical thing to do-pass the time on their iPhones. And what did they discover? After two hours spent without electricity in the Chicago Art Department, art became achievable through one of the most accessible and portable ways. Enter iPhone art.

Four months later, the room has a different setting. It’s lit for one thing, but what they discovered as art now lines the walls for others to discover. Surrounded by high ceilings and white walls, the latest exhibit of iPhone art by 25 artists around the world was showcased on Jan. 8 as people filed in from the cold to admire this new form of artistic expression.

“The iPhone has so many applications; it’s about time someone did (an exhibit), because you can do so much with it,” said Rick Aguilar, a photographer attending the exhibit. Coming in, he said he expected a lot of unusual things. Upon leaving, he expressed a definite interest in becoming an iPhone artist. Using the iPhone to constantly document what he sees upon traveling, Aguilar said he wished he had known about this earlier so he too could have participated.

Melissa Porter, a sculptor, art educator and iPhone artist said she was most attracted to the notion of bringing her sculpture to life through the different iPhone applications. She got an iPhone six months ago and was invited by Nourse, co-founder of the Chicago Art Department, to join the “iPhone Therefore I Am” class he had started. Using a projector, she displayed time-lapse images of a sculpture of nine faces, showing the multiple expressions of people she had photographed in the Dominican Republic. “I’m a sculptor, not a photographer,” said Porter. “Normally I could glaze a piece of clay, paint something on it, but it’s frozen in time.” Her piece, titled Expressionism, was edited with the Brushes, Juxtaposer, and iTimelapse applications.

Nourse compared the iPhone’s use of applications for art to that of a marker, saying that if he asked someone to walk around with a marker in their pocket and not use it, that would almost be impossible.

For Porter, the inspiration of working with another medium opened a world of portability. Aside from being an iPhone artist, she is also a mother of a 4-year-old child. “I can’t be in the studio all the time,” said Porter. While the piece took six weeks, the only time she spent in her studio was when she was sculpting. All of the digital work was able to be done outside of the studio. “Hey, it’s a tool,” Porter said. “It’s something that’s with me all the time. It definitely has possibilities.” With its basic camera and simplistic software, limitation becomes shattered as the creation of art is just a touch away.

The exhibit exceeded expectations of 300 to 500 viewers, bringing in around 1,000 for the night. To Nourse, “All this is gravy.”