Just finished the front of the gallery. I did a quick chalk mural of the Earth and Mars against black space. It is a resting spot out front, for the Jules Verne style sculpture I made. It’s a bronze colored zeppelin hovering above the two planets in space. It will hopefully catch people’s eye and draw them in this month and keep the gallery hopping.
Locals at the JPL compound are excited. They have another Mars rover landing this week so the Time and Space Gallery in La Canada,Ca. chose that as their theme for the exhibit this month. The pieces I have here are in line with the MARS theme.
Along with my Time Piece series sitting on the counter in front I have my series, Communication Breakdown; mixed media collage paintings that feel like artifacts, old treasure maps, and lost relics found at the remote desert testing facility area 51.
In these works, I repurposed original JPL blueprints created in the 1960’s through the 1980’s. I love them for their organic quality.
Architectural hand drafting is now a lost art, having been replaced by technology and the wide spread use of speedy computer-aided design tools in the early 1980‘s.
As a former draftsperson myself, I was compelled to preserve the handmade lettering and lines of a fellow draftsman.
I chose image detail drawings that displayed the patterns and repeated the forms of the original brass model parts, which I then applied to the surface. My own graphite marks and hand drawn images link repeating, disjointed layers from the “then” to the “now.”
It is my attempt to document this lost art form and elevate it out of its perceived obsolescence, or status as a draftsman’s rite of passage, and instead revel in its slowness and preserve the human connection between art and design.
Come by if you can. The opening is at The Time and Space Gallery Friday, July 20th 7pm – 10pm
838 ½ Foothill Boulevard
La Cañada Flintridge
CA 91001
Map it!
Media:
Acrylic,paper, brass, graphite, watercolor on panel board.
Communication Breakdown 1 16″w x 20″h x 3/4″d
Communication Breakdown 2 14″w x 11″h x 3/4″d
Communication Breakdown 3 24″w x 21″h x 1.5″d
Gina M. Art In The Making 