assignment 2 by William

The artist I attempted to emulate was Ingrid Calame.

In my movement piece, I wanted to create lines that overlapped each other like in the paining above, with the blue flowing over the red and the light green in the corner like waves and giving a sense of diagonal direction. I also tired to emulate the idea of a circle hovering over the piece to provide tension and some depth with two abstract circular shapes. I made the design with the image of a bicycle going down a mountain on a sunny day .

In my repetition piece, I wanted to use the circle motif and line motif the way its done here in a similar way, with the general sense of the lines crossing over the circles and changing from green to white. The lines also cut into the circles and initiate a feeling of a pattern that is left to the viewer’s imagination.
I used the concept of repeating circles and lines crossing over each other for the piece, and tried to incorporate the themes of skid marks on the street, a common aspect of Ingrid’s work. I attempted to fashion the lines like tire screeches running over the circles and intertwining with them. To add to the car theme, I made the lines run over some of the circles so that they would resemble the logo of certain automobile makers. However, the sense of depth and repetition in the piece is not strong or cohesive since the circles prove to be a boring repetition and the lines just sort of flow flatly all over the place with no direction or sense of pattern.

For balance, I wanted to take Ingrid’s idea of tracing marks over certain locations and spots she sees (like how the giant tire like shape runs over more detailed lines and patterns and splits the piece in two) and apply it over a geographical sense.

The design was an attempt to draw subway and transportation lines cutting up Manhattan while the island itself is isolated by the Hudson and East Rivers. The geography below provided the basic shapes of the design.

But the weight distributed on the composition really shifts towards the right way too much. Black dominates the right side while only a little bit of black is present on the left. The giant white river towards the left also disrupts any sense of harmony towards the divided shapes of black and white on the left. I thought that the idea of natural, free flowing lines making land like shapes under more straight jagged lines could provide balance, but the subtle and somewhat abstract sense of symmetry that I saw in the satellite photo above became lost in the design.

This is the inspiration for emphasis and economy. I really liked how the blobs with detailed lines just spill over each other. My own design works the same way except the spills somewhat converge to a focal point and the blobs are separate and there is much more open space as an attempt to preserve economy.