Thursday, March 17, 2011

Colin - Broad St. Canal Narrative

BROAD ST. CANAL

Iteration 1:

Broad Street has a strong slope downwards to the river. Above is a ceiling of randomly lighted windows. Out to the East River is the only real opening to the sky and is where people disappear into and where cars appear out of. Upon approaching the water, the street hits a horizontal of traffic. The various layers include both cars on South St. and those entering the South St. Viaduct, bikes and pedestrians, and even helicopters flying in over the East River.

Words:

  • gravitate
  • stain
  • slope
  • burrow
  • constrain
  • flow
  • negate

...

Iteration 2:

Much of my process in printmaking revolved around setting down hard-ground, and then either using sugar lift, or gamsol to soften, break apart, and manipulate the surface. With gamsol on hard-ground, I was able to work with various gravities — manipulating ‘water’ flow by either turning and tilting the plate or by setting up constraints that directed flower more specifically. This process left the determining gravity (the orientation of the print) open to interpretation. Eventually through my process I was able to return to the site of Broad St. A strong diagonal composition was created through my process and I did various etchings with the needle to bring the abstract closer to a representational view of the site. At the bottom I saw forms of water (either East River or underground stream) so placed a shadow of the grating over this area. I observed this at the site; through gratings I could see the water of the stream. The middle-ground of the plate for me acted as an in-between, the space underneath the wedge of the hill. The upper part of the plate would act as the little bit of space for the ‘sky.’

It was interesting that the process went from the representational (observations of the site) to abstract (process of printmaking) and then back to the representational.

Words: (from list of vocabulary)

  • erode
  • divert
  • displace
  • redirect
  • constrain
  • reflect
  • disperse
  • flush
  • duplicate
  • pool
  • overlay

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