After doing the ruglet Blue Sweep, I thought I'd like to do more shaped works, which engage space differently than an image on a rectangle. I did lots of thumbnail sketches with a circular theme and kept coming back to the idea of an incomplete circle, so I did a watercolor sketch using a gradual color and value shift from one end to the other.
Richard Tuttle, Letters (The Twenty-Six Series), 1966, galvanized iron; 26 parts, each approximately 6 x 9 inches
When discussing Blue Sweep in comments, I thought of Richard Tuttle's piece Letters, a wacky take on the alphabet. Though I didn't use his shapes for this work, he continues as an inspiration (as I wrote about here). An aside: I recently watched Herb and Dorothy, a documentary about an unusual art collector-couple which included an interview with Tuttle. At one point he said, speaking of Herb "something goes from the eye to the soul without going through the brain", which is a lovely thought; even though I mull everything over, I love the idea of a mystery at the heart of the art enterprise.
Here is the wool for the project, which I dyed by dipping a long piece of fabric in a pot so that one end got much darker than the other. I added some blue to the red at the darkest end and some yellow at the light end; this increases the color change so that it's not only dark to light but also cool to warm. I hope this creates an illusion that the right end of the curl is moving forward in space. Below is the start of the project; I have to pay quite a bit of attention to my colors as I hook, to try to get smooth transitions of color: no auto-pilot on this one.
Great springy tension! (Maybe also spring-like.) Interesting how one feels the bright/warm advancing over the larger form/cool/dull/ high contrast. Usually, greater size and high contrast trump color to advance. Also like the potential energy of the interior negative space - like a fiddle-head fern about to unwind. Then if one wants to, a reversal can occur by thinking of your stopping point as a horizon line and we're looking through a sort of oculus!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughtful comment, Kim. I think that the large size of the left end of the piece might anchor it more, while the other end has more "spring". I worked on the shape of the interior space quite a lot, trying to get it to have a sense of movement, so I'm glad you noticed it.
ReplyDeleteI will really enjoy watching the red circle come to life. Thanks for explaining your technique for graduating the dye colors on your wool. I also watched the film about Herb & Dorothy! What an amazing marriage, to each other, to their artists, to collecting. I couldn't help think about the fine line between collecting and hoarding as we saw their tiny apartment get filled to the ceiling with art because of their unquenchable passion. I ultimately decided that I need to go a little more crazy myself, yay for Herb & Dorothy!
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