Shadow and Light

Shadow and Light by Hyeonjung Kang

Overview:

For our final, we were assigned to visit MoMA, choose an artwork, and then create a response to the piece either negatively or positively.

I chose Lee Bontecou’s hanging piece because I admired the way she set her work off from a wall and gave movement to the piece. Placed in the center of the room, the moving sculpture easily caught my attention with its beautiful harmony of welded steel, porcelain, wire mesh, canvas, grommets, and wire. I was intrigued by not only the structure of the piece but also the different shadows created while it was moving.

Process:

Inspired by Bontecou’s moving sculpture, I wanted to create a 3D sculpture that moves. I first sketched out different shapes, overlaying each other. Then, I went back in with a sharpie to fill the shapes in, creating one single piece. I traced the drawing on Illustrator. Next, I went to Canal Plastics Center to collect my materials. I bought one black opaque acrylic sheet and one double-sided silver mirror plate, both in 1/8″ thickness and 12″ h x 12″ w. Using the laser lab facility, I cut out two pieces on the black plate and two pieces on the mirror plate. For one of the two pieces on each plate, I made sure to include a 0.001 blue line to split it in half. When these pieces were all cut and ready, I glued the half pieces to the whole piece perpendicularly to create a 3D structure for each type of plate. Finally, I tied a string on the pieces to hang on a desirable location.

Final:

 

Overall, I am satisfied with the result since I was able to mimic the structure, movement, and different shadows of Bontecou’s moving sculpture. The project was an opportunity for me to revisit the laser lab process.

Video:

black plexiglass with shadow: d57f6e625eb34b7ba867f3efb0fd985e

mirror plexiglass with shadow: 932005e3d67647d7b97fc62f99002d10

black plexiglass without shadow: 8056aa7356b14b2193b43944d35ffa4c

mirror plexiglass without shadow: 307d8d5c05244332a05c1e93e71bd687

Reflection:

My goal when choosing Drawing Through Making Center as my elective was to explore through different materials and to learn different methods in creating art. I am glad I chose this course because I learned so many useful facilities that I would definitely use in my future projects. This course has taught me that I can make art in infinite ways. In addition, this project summarizes this course because it was an opportunity for me to explore constructing a new structural piece, a mobile, through my favorite facility, the laser lab.