All the Arts Under One Roof

This is the last assigned project of my undergraduate program. The task was to re-work a previous project from one of our earlier studio courses with the purpose of build on upon it (rather than fixing or improving it). I chose a simple drawing exercise I did in my drawing class; an orthogonal projection of a building (Sage Art Center).

Orthogonal projections are interesting to me because they don’t represent the object as in a perspective, but rather describe it, and in a way, abstract it or reconfigure our understanding of it. The idea of showing architecture in a way different from how we commonly perceive it fascinates me.

I decided to accurately draw the ceiling plan of Sage Art Center, which is essentially an open plan building consisting of 25 columns, and

My goal was to further abstract something that is already abstract and unnoticed–a building/architecture. I like to graphically interpret architecture in an effort to show viewers unseen or unthought-kiof aspects/possibilities of a building they regularly use and perhaps (probably) barely notice.

At the same time, I like geometry and patterns, and architecture is all about that. Sage is a perfect square with multiple geometries embedded in the form of column grids, mechanical chases, light fixtures, etc. Perhaps people can look at the ceiling and its elements (for the first time) as things other than random utilitarian interventions, and find some order and even beauty in what at first seems like an undefined structural chaos.

Week Plan: A Möbius Strip?

I recently submit the piece below to an undergraduate art show her in my school. Last year my work was one of the elected pieces for the exhibition but this year I was not lucky enough. Nonetheless, I consider this piece to be quite a step forward in my research involving the graphic representation of space.

What if a psychologist, instead of asking you to write your week’s activities in a log, presumably to “optimize” you’re time management, asked you instead to write down, or rather, draft, the spaces you occupy during that week? How about “space optimization”? What’s the space in between? What’s the space within? Without?

With this proposition in mind, I set out to draft the spaces I occupied during a whole business week of my life, using only measuring tape and standard architectural software to create a “floor plan” of each day, Monday through Friday. To reduce my scope from global to doable, I eliminated the spaces where I spent less than 5 min. engaged in an activity. With this rule, hallways, roads, and parking lots were eliminated to create a fairly tight plan which was arranged according to the geographical position of each room or place in relation to the others.

My room and dorm bathroom happen to occupy the northernmost point of my plan. Usually, the library lies to the south while the food (dining halls) lie towards the East and center. Computer lab? West.

Once these plans are joined, they form a kind of Mobius strip, quite illustrative of the daily life of many. A spatial matrix from which there is no escape. The repetition is obvious and almost impossible to escape.

What kinds of spatial patterns exist in each week, for each person? Where do we actually exist?

How do the “powers of architecture,” affect us without our knowledge? What does a wall, or a window, or a column does to our daily life? How can we change the spatial discourse on a personal, citizen level? What would we see, and understand, by looking at our “week plan”?

There is much knowledge to be found in the realm of spaces, if only we look. And measure.

Ink Experiments I

 

Ink is fascinating.

Liquid, running ink.

I think that, unlike using a pencil or a pen, ink contains a high level of unpredictability that adds a unique character to a piece. No two marks are identical.

My experience with ink is limited, but recently I decided to do an earnest effort to experiment with it, trying to figure out some of the almost endless possibilities of this medium.

In particular, I tried to play between sharpness and diffusion. To accomplish this, I wet the blade of an exacto knife with ink and “cut through” the paper to make very thin lines that also have a texture to them. Along the path of my cut lines, I damped the paper with water so that as soon as the ink went through the area, it would spread in unpredictable ways. These are some of the results:

Intro to Drawing: The Nude Drawing

I don’t know about other art schools, but nude drawing seems to be a very rare thing these days, and as far as I know, nobody has done it before in my school as part of the art program.

I felt truly lucky to be able to experience nude drawing. As I sketched the model before me, I learned a lot not only about drawing, but about beauty and the human body. Our model, who was a professional dedicated to modelling for artistic purposes, was by no means a magazine cover girl. She was real. No Photoshop, no fancy lighting, no  make-up or surgery, and of course, no clothes.

What a beauty.

Every time she struck a new pose, a felt a rush of delight as the skin, molded by the muscles beneath, acquired new depths, new forms and shadows. The nude human body suddenly became monumental to me, and supremely aesthetic. I was suddenly aware that the endless images we get from the internet and the magazines are indeed very flat, and unreal. That the faces and bodies we see there are neither beautiful or ugly, they simply do not exist, and for all they matter, are incomparable in truth and effect on our existence to the woman in front of me.

Yuri Romayenko, on first becoming the first human to travel in space, said after coming back to Earth that the cosmos was like a magnet. Once you’ve been there, all you can think of is how to get back.

Well, nude drawing is similar. Once you’ve done it, all you can think of is how/when to do it again.

Here are some of my “better” sketches from the three sessions we had with our model in Professor X’s class–the first time I truly saw the human figure.

Shadow Tectonics

Tectonics (architecture): “the science or art of construction, both in relation to use and artistic design.”
Shadow: “An area were light from a light source is obstructed by an object.”

Paper Architectures

What would it be to stand inside a paper room?

That is the question I asked myself in response to the latest challenge from my art professor: a so-called “multiples project:” 350 or more identical items that together construct meaning relevant to their material identity.

Below is the answer to my question and to the challenge. The piece has no title. The empty 400 folded sheets of paper speak of the material and nothing more. At the same time, the empty white walls invite people to project their own meaning to the structure, whether they look at it from the exterior, or experience it from within.

 

In all honesty, the idea had already occurred to me at least a couple of months ago. I had been toying with the idea of paper architectures for a while in relationship to discourses such as “truth of materials:” letting the brick, wood or concrete speak for themselves–no decoration, just pure material expression. Why not give a chance to paper? This assignment was the first opportunity I had to give it a shot.

As it turned out, the execution was not perfect. The installation is not a room per se.The walls reach only halfway to the floor. My original idea also called for a paper ceiling that would follow the same pattern of the “walls.”

It is just another one of those projects were “you’re never done, you simply run out of time,” as my mentor would put it.

Nonetheless, something did seem right in the end, perhaps not in phenomenological terms as I’d hope for, but visually. It was described several times as poetic.

What do you think?

Interventions III

The final installment in my interventions series, and, I must say, my favorite.

This piece had to be done in a space we considered as “personal.” I decided to take the meaning of personal liberally and so selected the Art and Art History Department floor as my place to intervene, the reason being the fact that I spend quite a lot of time there, and a lot of important memories have been forged within these walls.

The problem with the department is that it presents an incredibly institutionalized, boring facade. I believe that if there’s a department that should stand out visually for fundamental reasons that is the art department.  So I went to work and this is what I did:

ART PARASITE

The tinfoil pseudo-organic structures make people have an above average visual and physical engagement with what’s normally a very plain environment, more akin to a prison than an art department. Scattered across the floors, walls, doors and furniture of this passage, the tinfoil structures are an outgrowth of the building’s necessity to become something special after so much regularity. They do not make the space prettier, but more interesting.

The point is to get a reaction from people who usually get anesthetized by this kind of environment. If people laugh, get pissed off, wonder what’s wrong, or otherwise just look twice at this environment, I consider it a success. If in this closer inspection, people find something new about this formerly ignored space, that’s some valuable bonus points for me!

 

 

 

Interventions II

I’d like to share my second intervention art project. This intervention had to be done in a commercial space and had to have a “magnanimous” quality to it. In other words, we had to give something back.

ART, NOT BUSINESS

 

 

I decided to carry out this intervention at the art supplies section of our university bookstore, which is known for its high prices. My goal was to make a commentary on those prices by making a gift to the bookstore: a cardboard and paper model of our flat , squared art center on campus with a message written on the top. This message was to be a letter from the Art Center (a building) to the Bookstore (another building).

In the letter, the Art Center asks the Bookstore why the prices on art supplies are so high, given that most art students struggle to cover those expenses. It makes a formal request to lower these prices and finishes off with a sharp remark:

“We are here to make art, not business.” 

I ignore the fate of my gift, but my task being that of a messenger and nothing else, I considered my job done once I left the model on top of the drawing boards for sale.

Comments?

Interventions I

I am finally taking an art class that involves making things, which I was not doing often enough. By making things, I mean building objects that have an impact in the community, the way art should be. So far I had been involved in very secluded, “indoors art” which spins inside the classroom and then dies. I have finally come out.

The first major assignment involved the creation of three so called “interventions.” Each intervention had a couple of parameters that set some boundaries and challenges for us to work with. This is my first work in a series of three.

FOLLOW YOUR IPHONE

The brief was to create an intervention with political tones and in a very public space.

The piece is a commentary on the smartphone walking culture of the second decade of the 21st century. Inside the tunnels of the university (which you can admire in the pictures above) there is no visual input for the user other than blank, awful walls, random activity posters, and other people walking past, ahead or behind him/her. The only viable option to avoid eye contact is to stare at your phone and be absorbed (or pretend to be absorbed) by your own business.

My piece is a series of posters that capture the profile of such action. A white, self centered figure walks while looking at his phone, while the real “outer” world remains in the dark, of no interest. The figure is slightly offset to the right, to indicate our fast pace and disregard for the external.

The composition as a whole intends to provide a visual continuity throughout the tunnels that forces the user to recognize the message as they move, most likely, with their phone in their hand. The “aha” moment comes just as they reach the end of the visual transition.

The title, “Follow your iPhone,” comes from Steve Jobs’ commencement speech to Stanford graduates, where he advises them to “follow their hearts.” The current social-technological situation reflects quite ironically on his advice.

The one comment I directly received (as I put the posters up) was from a girl who took Digital Art with me a year ago.

“It makes so much sense.”

That was exactly what I wanted to achieve. Sense.

It took some time…

I’ve felt the need for a regular blog for a time now. My thinking was that if I was gonna have such a thing, I should also do it myself (write the code and all that).

Unfortunately, time is one of the many things I don’t have for spare so this will have to do it for now while I work on a truly personal website for my portfolio.

What’s this blog about then? My art and studies: architecture, cityscapes, media, data… and anything somehow connected to that.

I am Pedro and I am an Art and Art History student at the University of Rochester.

Welcome.