graffiti transformation

The original walls are painted into a new setting which both documents and transforms the vernacular language of street graffiti. This is a response to an actual site through formal transformation. Progression, transition, and transformation are evoked through shifts in color, which are evolving through sequential panels.

The gum bichromate process is a symbiosis of photographic negatives and watercolor pigments on a textured paper surface. Additive layering is intrinsic to this medium. It is a simultaneous process of integrated layers which relate to and blend with each other. In this series, I painted with photography to construct form. I layered several colors and graffiti forms on the same page to “paint” form and color.

These studies undertake the reinterpretation of a graffiti wall and its translation through a new medium of form generation. The translation involves the original nature of graffiti—painted, layered shapes cut out of a sequential wall mural and reframed onto new pages. The process stems from the reinterpretation of the original place and creates an object in its own image and with its own values. The layering of abstracted, decontextualized forms responds to the nature of graffiti as a layered, painted surface which exists on an outside wall. As this is an additive process of layers, it also responds to graffiti artists layering on top of existing graffiti, sometimes obfuscating the images below with their own imagery.

I enjoy painting, but not painting on a blank surface. I want my project to be a documentation and transformation of a particular place. This photographic painting mixes existing images into new mediums which comment on the original materials. The iterative addition of layers to construct a new surface which directly is derived from an actual place is a transformative response to existing content and interests me in the possibilities of interpretation.

The graffiti fragments, completely abstracted from their original context, construct a new wall of color and form. The abstracted forms of graffiti construct new canvases of lines and shapes. The original wall mural has been reconfigured into a new medium to study overlap and juxtaposition and gestural form. The structure of the page is ordered by rectangular geometry. The panels are not organic, and even the random blotches have a strong geometric structure in their framing and juxtaposition. An organic medium—amorphous watercolor paint—is kept structured through strong horizontal lines of the masonry walls. The swaths of color, brush strokes, paint drips and blotches are some of the details that continue to evoke their original context. They ground the abstracted panels with some structure and semblance of the concrete block walls where the graffiti had been painted.

The same several negatives were used in this reconfigured kit of parts. With different colors and different assemblages of the same negative, different space is created. This assemblage of like parts that only differ in the configuration and color mixing allows the space of the page to be altered, depending on how the eye perceives color. The transparency allows the areas of overlap to create new colors. For example, the pink and the green overlaps create purple. As a result of this “inbetween” area of overlap, the colored forms have added a new dimension on the page with the third space they build. The point of intersection takes on significance as a real layering of physical colors. The colors of the transition and overlaps are the new inbetween colors, physically made up of two other colors. Here the additive layering process actually constructs something new, and has a purpose for its juxtaposition. The pairings and juxtapositions exist on the same page changing each other through their proximities.

The prints utilize both subtle and vibrant color juxtapositions, playing with different hues but similar values, as well as more garishly high contrast oppositions. The brighter colors speak to the bright graffiti originals, while the more subtle colors create a blending and shifting of the perceived space.

The sequence and progression of the abstracted forms is grounded in its exhibition format. I pinned up the individual pages in one row on the gallery wall to reconstruct a new photographic linear wall. Progression, transition, and transformation are evoked through the shifts in color, which are evolving through the sequential the panels. The story exists in the transitions between the panels, as they are meant to viewed in a sequence in which the colors are slowly transforming and turning. The magenta and hunter greens give way to the teals and cyans, over the course of the transition. The gestures of paint and surface slowly evolve over the course of the sequenced pages.

verbal framing

neighborhood, outlook, courtyard, outside, sundown, paintbrush, afternoon, nighttime, outdoor, viewpoint, openair, framework, stilllife, sketchbook, background, cobblestone , tree branch, sunset, landscape, clocktower, oaktree, brushstroke, gaslamp, sunlight, countryside, foothill

This elaboration on the previous framing project was completed for Krzysztof Lenk’s studio. Layering is successful when depth and dimension are added to the layers. The space of a book can be changed through the cutting away of pages. Viewers can then look at the book in space through the z axis, not just on the x and y dimensions of the pages. Just as buildings are viewed in section and not in plan, space in graphic design can be experienced through this z dimension. New word analogies are constructed through flipping the pages.

on framing fragments 02

How do you selectively frame to play with spatial construction and deconstruction? The translation of a spatial journey into a two dimensional medium acts as a sequence of moments, simultaneously moving and stopped in time.

We were given a photograph and asked to respond to it in a 17x24 printed piece. Looking at the original image, I immediately became aware of the multiple canvases that were different interpretations of the clock tower in front of them. I noticed that every painter framed a fragment of the clock tower based on their own perception. As my response to the original image, I became interested in framing a fragment of the given photograph. The play of positive and negative, foreground, middle ground and background were simulated though layering fragmented words in a mock-up collage over the photocopied photograph. I kept making iterations of the original image and reinterpreting them. Almost in a cubist like fashion, I broke up words and the image background into the composition of the poster. The final printed piece evolved into three separate pieces, each one framing a given reality differently. Each framing resulted in a different perception of space.

Playing with two sizes of type and with positive and negative forms, the eye was tricked into reconfiguring the fragments in space. Normal perception was altered so that the foreground recedes to the background and the background jumps to the foreground. This spatial interplay on the two dimensional page created space and altered space. It utilized framing as a mechanism of creating boundaries for a given object or word. Type boxes on the page mimiced the vocabulary of the amateur painters stacked on the path in front of the clock tower. With the differentiation of words and hierarchies, the reader of the printed piece had a shifted reading of the flow of information. They could pick up fragmented thoughts according to how they perceived the structure.

Through scanning the three dimensional mock up, I focused on the fact that even the poster is an iteration or framing of reality. I highlighted the process of construction by playing with white or black frames, and by leaving a gap where the two scans were meant to be seamed together. Revealing these seams—these overlaps and juxtapositions—highlighted the hand of the interpreter. I stressed the fact that I constructed this interpretation of the original photograph, and that this was yet another iteration of the “real” clock tower. Frames within frames, layers upon layers, these were fragmented, simultaneous moments of the real experience. This honesty of interpretation and translation became an interesting, if obvious, way that form followed content and the project spoke about the construction of itself.

on framing fragments 01

Learning from Las Vegas

Learning from Las Vegas was a good case study to look at. The book developed for Anne West’s writing workshop dealt with the sign as a building, and how contemporary conception of space involves with signs, information and symbols rather than abstract form. Constructing an interactive book as a means of breaking up the space of the page, I created a book in a flipable form that allows endless variations and juxtapositions of pages and information.

It is really important to look at readings which are relevant to my topic but are also coming from a vocabulary of expression— architecture writing—that I am familiar with. I can reanalyze a lot better if I understand already the history, the background, the theory—all the things that make up the genre of writing. I can look at it with different eyes and see how it applies to my thesis topic. I think this has been a very a specific case study which allowed me to establish specific definitions to analyze oppositions of spaces and buildings.

I created a book in which the top and the bottom of the book can be turned at different speeds to create a vertical opposition of two bodies of content: modern architecture and vernacular architecture. Hammett was very intrigued by the reinterpretation of the text in the flipping book format. In this format, the flipping of the pages gives the reader variability and depth. Just as they perceive their surroundings in space, and can approach an isolated point from different sides, from the front or the back or either of the two sides, the flip book allows the reader to approach the book from different perspectives. The pages flip and have variability and depth. The depth and dimension is not frozen in space, but changeable depending on the user’s needs and interests. It is a flat page which has space in it.

My book has a foreground, middle ground and background. It has depth not just in the variable page sizes, but in the pages that involve overlaps and juxtaposition of transparent letterforms. The juxtaposition of flatness and depth is a relevant topic of study for a book that deals with the content of a two dimensional sign taking the place of a three dimensional building.

The variable quadrants create a different sequence and different story depending on how the book is flipped. I liked the information from Learning from Las Vegas—but the complete quotes tend to get too overwhelming to juxtapose in the four quadrants. Maybe if I go in line by line, word by word, I can start making pairings between lines, and have a reason for juxtaposing the four quadrants together. Right now it is still paragraph by paragraph, the meaning is a bit more ambiguous when you start comparing paragraphs from top to bottom. What if it was a sentence, what if it was a word? That specificity would create a new unified whole from the fragments.

What am I going for when it comes to these fragments? Why would people want to reconstruct them? What do they want to get out of it? I like Hammett’s suggestion—the way I am fragmenting is more framing what I see rather than cutting apart for the sake of cutting apart. It involves the ideology that adding and subtracting allows the user to see something else on the page. The fragmentation has a construction aspect to it. I am trying it out with wax, dots, spray paint, letterpress and transparencies. All are 2D physical mediums but they allow people to have a new reading of the content with their interactivity and variability.

additive juxtaposition

The whole color, the tactile quality, makes the cyanotype a great medium, but a lot of what was lacking, was that I had paired snippets or broken fragments of my southwest trip with stanzas that were broken as well. A poem about palms—as much as liked the book about palm tress, and what palm trees mean—I think was too conceptually related to looking at the signs. I think if I had paired the signs—which are pretty abstract already even though they are specific signs—their context, how I broke the background up, how I reconfigured the page. I had broken up something I had seen, I had already framed it one way by taking the photograph, I was re framing it again by putting it on a piece paper that had changed it. It kept being framed and framed again.

I think a better juxtaposition—if it needed one, that’s debatable as like them as pictures as themselves—would have been to pick something specific. If I chose a passage about the language of signs as buildings, I could have picked something very specific, looking at a pertinent quote. Maybe, “What is the sign now?” could have been a topic to study.

book of dots 02

The first project for Krzysztof's class dealt with the general body of interest I have, the idea of reality versus fantasy, constructing something real out the unreal, or constructing the unreal from the real. For the first six, seven weeks of the semester I started using a lot of diagrams, mind maps, correlations between what I was thinking of, what my project should be, I was more interested in the process of that whole experience rather than the actual product, the book of dots.

The physical experience, the book of dots, involves reading the book and seeing the pages. I can make a stop motion animation out of it—one thing Krzysztof suggested—that in itself is an experiential, rather than content based manifestation of the idea. But. it no longer relates to time, and we had that discussion. This is a physical abstract story of dots. Its not really about time, more like sequencing, more about presenting a very qualitative, tactile experience that people read, look at. They turn the pages, see the glossy dots, see the matte dots, see the cutouts. There is no narrative, its just about the form acting as a way of people to look at their own perception, learning how they see. A lot of my work used to deal with that, I am struggling with giving my work more content. That has been this whole semester, how do you add something to it that adds to it.

book of dots

As a response to various Harper’s Index facts, a project in Krzysztof Lenk’s class, I started studying reality versus fantasy, constructing something real out the unreal, and constructing the unreal from the real. Limiting myself to one size of stencil, playing with positive and negative paint over this stencil, and also limiting finishes to matt and gloss, white and black creates the vocabulary of expression to experiment with reconfiguration. The pages can be changed to create different counting configurations.

Investigating space through two dimensional sprayed patterns of dots plays with perception of foreground, middle ground, and background on a flat page. The white and black spray paint play in space to add depth and dimension to the flat page. Depending if the circles are in front or in back, they create shallow or deep space. Reinterpreting the surface allows te viewer to enter the space. The depth has negative space they can go into.

what las palmas mean

Pairing poetry words with photographic cyanotype images in a random narrative fashion created fragmented stores and new logical interpretations of my travels in the southwest. These panels document and frame the vernacular signs of route 66 against evocative words about palm trees.

The frame, the brush stoke, and the image are three disparate elements that are simultaneously existing on a non hierarchal page. They are not mixing or blending, but cut into the page landscape in a structured frame. The words of the poem are contrasted against the words of the sign. The 2D and 3D surface of the page—2D words and 3D photographs—is constructing flatness and depth.