The thesis paper

The paper is the only thing that i have left now besides installing my piece in the gallery. I feel that my project has completely changed and that i almost need to rewrite my whole dam paper. However, I feel that my project hasnt varied from the core concepts of my piece. If anything i have investigated and involved even more concepts now. I guess I just dont know if my painting and paper still reflect each other....

Panels are finished.

The panels are done being painted and the enamel has been applied to the backs of them. I think this is pretty much how i want the composition to be. If i keep it this way, the piece will be 6ft in height, 4 ft 3in at the widest point and extend 7 inches off the wall at its thickest part. There are 2 layers of panels, the layers will be seperated by 2 in dowel to help create an interesting sense of depth.

Step 3 of light boxes

The last step was to do all the proper wiring for the light boxes. The light boxes are actually ceiling light fixtures and are meant to be hard wired to a power source. Due to this fact, I had to add proper wire and a plug so they will work in the gallery

Step 2 of the light boxes

The second step was adhering the tiles. What I did was made them very condensed at one end and dispersed at the other end. The light boxes then sat for 24 hours and cured.

Step 1 of light boxes

The first step of the lightboxes was to create a composition for the glass tiles on the light boxes. I wanted to make sure it was exactly what i wanted before i permanently adhered them to the light box. What i did was taped off 14.5 inch square on a table in my studio and used that as a template to arrange the tiles.

Camera is up and working again

So... my camera is finally functioning again and im now uploading pics of the progress of my thesis project....

The idea for this project is overlaying foam panels that are backlit by lightboxes. I ran into a few problems with this project so far and still have few problems left to work out. I first encountered the problem of what to do with the foam panels. I originally planned on doing all the panels bright, vibrant colors. However, I thought a nice white/irredescent white stripe would make an interested background. But, once I completed the stripes I really liked how miminalist it turned out and the simplist beauty of the directions the stripes went. I also thought it would compliment the light boxes well. This posed a huge debate bc my whole thesis paper was about color theory mostly and now I basically removed all color from the piece. To slightly resolved this problem by adding color to my light boxes by means of glass mosaic tiles. The tiles are condensed at one end and dispersed at the other end. I had a few other minor problems but none of them are worth talking about. SO the only problem left is figuring out how to mount all of these panels on the wall in the gallery. They have to be mounted about 4-5 inches off the wall in order for them to be infront of the lightboxes and still leaving enough room for any heat produced by the light boxes to be able to escape and not melt the foam panels. So far the only way i came up with to mount them is joining to L brackets together to form a U bracket. However, I am concerned that because of the size bracket i will have to use, the weight of the bracket will be too much that it will rip when mounted to the foam. Any suggestions of other ways i can mount the foam panels?

Crit #2

This week we met at LAB and held crit there. Due to the size of and material my work is made in, it was impossible for me to transport them on the rutgers bus without damaging them. However, I brought with me sketches of my project. ( i will scan them in and upload them as soon as my scanner feels like working again... the same goes for images of my work in progress. just waiting on my new memory card to come in. ) Anyways, some new ideas and aspects were discussed and brought to my attention. I brought up the idea of carving into the foam(something i haven't done yet) and the crit group suggested i should carve the foam to make it very then so the light from the light boxes behind it may illuminate the piece further. I, a few days later, tested out carving the foam and found it to be very tedious and time consuming without great end results( besides very tender fingers that were easy to cut). So I have decided not to carve the foam because this is already a very ambitious project and I am concerned about not having enough time to complete every aspect of the piece to a level of satification if I added carving foam to the To-Do List.. The group was very interested in my idea of using light boxes and suggested some artists to look at. I think this will be very helpful to see how others have incorporated light into their works. It was brought to my attention that I need to think about the lighting of the light boxes further. I didn't really think about what kind of lighting I would want in the room that my piece is installed in. Plus I havent really thought about what kind of light would be in the light box. I just thought I would have a soft white glow of light. I never thought about color light or blinking pattern effect or anything of that relevance. Sooooo.... now I have so much more think about and it feels like this project has just become even more ambitious. But I feel that the added qualities that I now have to think about will only develop and push this piece even farther than I ever expected it to go.

Critique #1 spring2010

so my crit basically went like this.....

• more "pop" than elizabeth murray
• gray panels fuctioned as a grid
• panel is compelled to be read as a narrative(gray panels "buildings" succeeded into a void)
• sides of paintings: investigate how the line moves from the piece to foam piece
• Jenna suggested cityscape (organic shapes-> city life)
• Paul suggeasted it referenced a grid
• Joe said the circle is central optical point and seems like a visual vortex. He asked if there could be a balance to it.... something to comtemplate
• Paul wants me to contemplate the lighting source for my pieces. He says the lighting is an important aspect of it. I totally agree.
• the layers of panels come off as interesting and I should investigate the landscape aspect of it when building my piece for thesis.
• group says I should keep focusing on the color theory of my pieces because it seems to be an important aspect.

* I am open to another opinions or suggestions.