Above is a thumbnail of a small painting (6x8 on canvas) I made during Snowtoberfest 2011, aka the most severe power outage I hope to ever witness. Since I didn't have electricity and the battery of my laptop stopped working a long time ago from overuse, I painted and graded exams until it became too cold for me to stay. I got the idea for the painting from strolling through the de Kooning retrospective at MoMA, especially his black-and-white work in the 1940s - because of the curved shapes, not because of the colors, obviously. I've also always very much loved Map by Jasper Johns, in MoMA's collections, and Report from Rockport by Stuart Davis at the Metropolitan Museum for its bright colors - generally speaking, I like abstract expressionism, fauvism, post-impressionism the most.
So, putting everything together, I came up with the idea of making a painting about last year's IE 316 class (Fall 2010) in the form of a puzzle, where everybody would fit in his or her own particular way. I'm at the bottom right corner (AT) with IE316-10 written beneath (10 is for 2010); the Teaching Assistant is to my left (RD). Then the 40 students are listed according to their initials. When two students had the same initials, I also included the second letter of the last name to distinguish them.
I've got to take a better-quality picture of the painting but the lighting was awful so I thought I'd just post a thumbnail until I'm happy with the photograph. That makes the letters harder to read than they are in reality. Here is the name plan (I tried to group students who sat/worked together but that was not always possible... sorry to the alumni who are not next to their friends):
From top to bottom and left to right:
- BR-JF-KW-MS-MB-KF-FR
- RG-WH-GH-BH-ESh-MD-KA
- ESm-RS-DL-DG-ER-AB-LD
- DM-DP-PF-AZ-PM-CC-YJ
- TR-TF-LCa-KGH-JP-LF-SZ
- LCh-BS-JA-RR-RA-RD-AT
Initially I wanted to color the pieces in such a way that two pieces of the same color never touched each other, even by a corner. I had found several ways to achieve that goal, which I had saved in Excel on my computer. Of course when the power outage happened I couldn't look up the file anymore and although no two pieces of the same color never touch each other along their sides, there are a few orange pieces that do touch by a corner. I view it as a lesson on not trying to control things too much.
Comments