Less is More

At my visit to the Walker Art Center, I took the time to observe the following piece:

Robert Irwin
Slant/Light/Volume Exhibition
untitled, 1971
synthetic fabric, wood, fluorescent lights, floodlights
96 x 564 in.
Collection Walker Art Center Gift of the artist, 1971



(images courtesy of http://calendar.walkerart.org/canopy.wac?id=4671)

Robert Irwin's work in the mid-1960s helped develop and define the guide for the West Coast Light and Space movement by exploring how we consciously perceive phenomena. Although the design of the architecture seems simple, there is great psychological intent in the reasons for the aesthetics and construction. The overall experience of the viewer is really the main focus of his work, because he says that his work is not complete without viewer participation within the space. It is all about how people interact with the work in physical, sensory, and temporal experience of space.

He started using a translucent scrim in the 1970s, a fabric used in theatre productions, which is opaque unless lit from behind. This is used in this piece to give depth to the composition of space. When I entered the gallery, I loved the open and calm feeling of emptiness. It was not empty in a dull way, but in a tranquil and reflective way. It allowed me to relax, sit down, and appreciate the simplicity of the space. When I sat looking at the fabric stretched diagonally in front of the space behind it, I didn't even really think about the fabric. Since the fabric was so taughtly stretched, it was completely smooth, and so I was tranfixed on the space behind it, which was visible because of the fluorescent lighting. It made me want to walk through the fabric, because it is almost an optical illusion of space, you hardly even notice that there is a barrier between the two spaces the cloth divides.

Overall, I loved the simplicity and tranquility of this piece. It was void of chaos and distractions, providing a nice contrast to the business of the modern world. The calmness allowed me to slow down and just relax and think, and I appreciated the purposeful interactive quality of the work. In the words of the artist, "From a phenomenological viewpoint, to make the observers necessary to complete the quality quotient of art is probably the most human, the most emotional, the most sensory thing to do."

Contour Drawings

These are contour drawings from this past week. We have now begun to add form to line drawings by adding more contour lines to create a 3D look. I started shading and darkening parts of the line, and keeping other parts light to create a more dimensional appearance of the form. The contour lines must be very sinuous to make the body forms appear to have some shape.

Shell Savvy

My shell is a conch shell of the family Strombidae and the genus Strombus. The word 'conch' is a derivative from the French language of a Greek word pertaining to any kind of shellfish or shell. It's scientific name, Strombus gigas, means 'giant spiral shell.'

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Gastropoda
Order: Mesogastropoda
Family: Strombidae
Genus: Strombus
Species: gigas

Queen Conchs usually mate in warm shallow waters in the Caribbean on sandy surfaces behind coral reef areas. When the embryos leave the egg, they float for about 3 weeks until they are about the size of a grain of sand and lose their swimming ability. They then sink to the bottom of the ocean floor. The water movement and sandy environment probably contributes to some of the weathered texture on the outside of the shell.

The shell is a growing organism while the mollusk inside it is alive. The konk is a gastropod, an invertebrae, that is a soft-bodied mollusk protected by a very hard shell. It grows 3 inches a year during its active growth phase, maturing at about 8 inches long.

Spinal Contours

This image is a contour drawing focusing on the positioning of the spine. I looked at how the curvature of the spine effected the entire body positioning. It is interesting to see what absolutely essential role the spine plays in the movement of the body, and drawing that accurately sets up the entire drawing. The spine is not stiff and straight like a ruler, but it is sinuous and flexible, even when people are standing straight up. By really concentrating on this flowing, curving line, my drawings took on a more natural look in capturing positioning. I am really interested in learning more about the anatomy of the human body, because it is already making me look more critically at the human form in my drawing. It will continue to help me understand the underlying structure to see the little juts and curves as muscle and bone shaping the body. With my contour lines around the torso, I was trying to figure out the 3D roundness of the body. I am also just excited to be drawing again, and I think the human form is a very interesting subject to study.

Blind Contour and Continuous Line Drawings

The first drawing is a blind contour drawing. It is interesting to see what happens when the eye to forced to work in a different way with the hand. The process can be a bit frustrating, because it is not as easy to control the outcome of the image. So it looks strange and disproportional, but new details are caught by slowing down, and it has a nice quality. Since the drawing is so light, try viewing the larger image to see more detail!

The five words I would use to describe this composition would be:
1) for value: light
2) for speed: moderate
3) for character: controlled
4) for pressure: soft
5) for another descriptive word: sketchy

The second drawing is a continuous line drawing. This drawing I tried to practice blind contour as well at first, and then went back to rework afterward. I liked the effect of this, and I was surprised at how accurate some of the details were in the drawing, even though proportions are slightly off. Keeping a continuous line was difficult, because I wanted to be able to stop and start, but it helped as an exercise to draw the outline of the form.