places

Core Samples 04 — Think about places which have been, and may still be, special or important to you. Recall places where you were able to be centered, to see clearly. Think about where this place is geographically and physically.

My paintings for this week attempted to create emotive illustrations about beaches, and to create assemblages about the juxtaposition of sand and the water. I thought that the words “stand” and “float” conveyed the essence of this point of transition and opposition in long stretches of sand and endless water.

Most of the places I wrote about were outdoor places. Beaches seemed to always hold interest and inspiration for me. When I grew up in San Francisco, I used to always go walking or running along Ocean Beach. It was the open, uncovered place of refuge in a dense urban environment. At the beach, the sky was wide open and my eyes could scan the distant horizon and the calming water. I watched the waves, breaking on and receding from the shore. The rhythm of the waves enlightened a meditative state of relaxation and contemplation.

I went to the beach on warm sunny days, as well as on overcast foggy ones; it was always beautiful and peaceful. I always enjoyed Northern California beaches, and somehow was shocked when I moved to Los Angeles and beaches were no longer natural refuges, but crowded entertainment venues. I liked the windswept, isolated strips of sand, rather than the crowded volleyball arenas.

Beaches are places were two things come together: the land and the water. The sky and the horizon are also visible here, but they are not usually visible in dense cities like San Francisco. Calm, empty, quiet—they are an edge and a boundary, a connection and a separation. Beaches are places of juxtaposition and transition.

people

Core Samples 03 — Chose one person from your list. What is your relationship with them? How would you represent this person in abstract form? What colors would be most accurate? What materials? What shape? What scale? What context? What words would be included?

When writing about people who have influenced me, I wanted to do a project about my previous boss, Pat Ford. I had always felt fortunate for meeting Pat, but did not realize the significant impact she has had on my life. She is unparalleled as a mentor, as a woman who runs her own successful design business. She has amazing design sense, along with esteemed social graces, cooking and gardening skills. She became an inspirational role model for me, in graphic design and in life. I wanted to create a book which symbolized her design style, her personality, and her influences on my life.

Pat had been the person who introduced me to the power of words and letters as forms, as I had worked for her designing signs before I came to grad school. I decided to create a book of letter forms to symbolize her professional influence on me.

The accordion book about Pat allowed me to look at representing space through a two dimensional medium. The book combines type, image, and space, which I thought were the appropriate symbols for Pat. Modernist and Craftsman aesthetics are manifested through the rectilinear and circular letter forms. I first attempted to create a childlike “pop book” to represent working on signs in Children’s hospitals with her. But, the book seemed to transcend childlike pop up books, and wanted to become a manifestation of Pat’s house and design aesthetic, two things I was immediately drawn to.

In a certain sense, Pat had been already represented by her house. The work I did was very much linked to this house, and I felt very comfortable there. She had transformed the house in her own image, from a humble, dilapidated cottage to an exquisitely detail and historically appropriate craftsman bungalow. This house was her home as well as her workplace. Design clients would come and meet on the marble table in a cherry paneled living room. Thus, I associated Pat with this house, and the book I created symbolizes her through symbolizing her house.

The book symbolizes Pat through its colors and forms. The oranges, yellows, and cyans have an “bungalow” association—they are simultaneously warm and modern. The color palette evokes her sophisticated color and material sensibility. Whenever we worked on signs or interiors, she would create color boards which were complex pairings of colors, rather than obvious primary choices.

events 02

Core Samples 02 — Sit quietly and comb through your life over ten important events. Make two pieces: one derived from an event and one derived from a person. These should be taken from the image you assigned it in your writing, not directly about the subject.

I became interested in events which reveal and conceal important truths in my life. Some get larger and keep expanding proportionally while others start out huge and get smaller. I viewed these events as moments of awareness which allowed me to see current situations and bring insight to circumstances in my life.

The two main events which I kept focusing on were unfortunate circumstances which had occurred to me this summer. In one incident, I woke up to find a bat flying in my bedroom and in the other incident I fell off of a horse. The bat had started out small and almost insignificant but it exponentially increased in the amount of trouble it brought into my life. A little bat flying over my head ensued in numerous emergency room visits, heath insurance problems, and painful shots. The problems resulting out of this event grew and grew, immensely and violently. The horse incident, on the other hand, was a seemingly huge deal—I blacked out, had a concussion, and found myself in an emergency room. Yet, after this scary initial shake up, the ensuing events quickly diminished in significance. I healed and things gradually subsided.

The other bookwork has wave-like or topography-like cuts. Waves and the architectural topography maps serve as metaphors for gradual, incremental increases and decreases. The rising or lowering of altitude in a topography map represents growth or decline. Change and transformation are conveyed in the stacking of the cuts which are progressively getting larger or smaller. Some cuts start out large and get smaller; others start out small and grow significantly. This form represents how certain events grow larger with problems, while other problems others start out large, and resolve themselves away. These cuts represent events which gradually evolve and change, but constantly affect me.

events 01

Core Samples 02 — I completed two bookworks in which I cut into existing books to represent the transformation of cause and effect in the events of the summer. The formal explorations in my book works allowed me to express how events in my life revealed and concealed other events, and how they played out over time and affected my life. The layers between the pages become apertures for framing ensuing content. Some holes reveal; others conceal. All show transformation and transition, cause and effect.

The first iteration utilizes random incisions—angled and unplanned. They are sharp, surprising, and violent. When sequentially turning the book, I cannot foreshadow the types of cuts in the following pages. The cuts come quickly and abruptly, and do not have longevity in their repercussions. Likewise, the concussion started out suddenly and abruptly, but it subsided away.