Gallery Crit #1

Street View of Gallery

Gallery Interior

Our final project for my space studio class is a redesign of the Mina Dresden Gallery on Valencia in the Mission District.

Formal Crit. #1

Above is a picture from our first formal crit. It took me 15 minutes to pin everything up. Included (moving left to right) are site photographs, site analysis studies (looking at light, materiality, traffic patterns and the buildings connection to the outside), existing site model on the floor, source images for our concept models, collage (not pictured, below), concept models (floor right), concept model photographs, and finally concept diagrams. We developed these items in the order I just listed them.

Volume Collage

Materiality Collage

Light Collage

Now we are in the process of using our conceptual ideas and applying them to the specific space. Many interior designers use this process before each project! It's a lot of work, but I developed a lot of ideas I would not have thought of if I had started working just with the site. So far I've been working with the divider idea to create private spaces in the public area (the gallery). I'm working on applying this idea to the private area as well.

Early Divider Model
Using rigid divides

Later Division Model
Tension model look

Human View Inside with Tension Dividers

The images above are based on the divider idea using triangular pieces of fabric similar to tension structures. Mina can change the lighting intensity and color or project images onto them. This would allow for video installation work to be shown as well. The fabric will also help during loud gallery openings. The fabric would be adjustable via snaps inset into the floor and along the wooden beams on the wall to allow an unlimited number of set ups. The two vertical ones at the end of the hall divide the public (gallery) from the private (her apartment).

Tension Structure
copyright Pink Inc.

My three goals for the space are:
1. Make light more ample
2. Define public and private spaces more clearly
3. Allow adjustability to accommadate a variety of artists

Dream Associations

Dream Bird 18"x 11"

As a few of you may know, I have long been interested by the ideas of dreams, memories, and thought. This was a large reason I decided to specialize in the Neuroscience field while attending UCLA. I wanted to know how they worked. Sadly my friends, there is not clear answer, so without a fulfilling scientific reason for their mechanism, I am back creating art revolving around their personalities. The Dream Bird is a product of the animal assignment from James Fish's collage course at UCLA extension. The only guideline we were given was to make it 3D, an animal, and to use our imaginations. So let me introduce you to the Dream Bird. He is a metallic blue to hide in the night as you sleep. When not on the job, he sits on your grandmother's candle holder. Here he is just about to take off for the night. His wings spread you can see the association of a dreamer: images of childhood, connected to barn houses, trinkets, birds and pin up women.

I am interested in how unlikely images are associated with each other during a dream. When something you saw briefly was stored in your subconscious and then comes out fully in a dream. The images a printed on tracing paper and shrinky-dink paper and connected with colored wire or thread. His wing bones are made of chop sticks and colored with bronze ink while his body is crayola air drying clay painted with acrylic. White feathers pipe out of his head and wings to give him a more bird-y look. I wanted viewers to see him and devise their own reasoning for why the images are connected they way they are. What is the story of this dream? How do you interpret it?

Little Stories Make Up a City by the Bay

Golden Gate 16"x 24"

Here is a photograph of a collage I made for our landscape project in James Fish's UCLA Extension course. Click on it, you may be able to see it in higher detail. It is made entirely from paper cutouts from magazines, catalogues, bills, and fliers. I am very interested in how little stories make up a larger one. The pieces of a puzzle and layering both in a physical way (vertically and horizontal as I glued piece on piece) but also in a metaphorical way. Cities are so appealing to me because there numerous people living there, separate from each other, but they are all connected. I tried to visually create this by taking objects you wouldn't think would fit in a city scape, but actually do fit in. For example, the potato and muffin on the left side of the bridge. They both are not 'mountains' but by their coloration they fit in. From far away, they are not noticeable, but from a far (or in your case my cyber friend, zoomed in you can see all the little pieces that make up the story of the city).