Engaging The Essence

Artists since the Industrial Revolution have represented mechanical assemblies in action. Whether through literature, photography, painting, drawing, film, or sculpture, the essence of The Machine is of recurring interest to contemporary artists as well.

This assignment was comprised of two phases: 1) A photo essay, and 2) a 14” x 14” graphite drawing.

Armed with a digital camera and tripod, each student photographed a personally-accessible infrastructure asset in a way that pictorially represents the essence of that particular infrastructure type. Of all photographs taken, each student identified the most exemplary (9) photographs in consideration of scale of subject, composition, lighting, shadow, exposure, and finish quality. Photographs were presented using a 18” x 24” Adobe InDesign template.

Students were then prompted to select the most informative, provocative or visually-engaging 4 ¼” x 4 ¼” image from Phase One and represent it at a larger scale as a hand-generated, fully-blended value scale (chiaroscuro), graphite rendering with extents of exactly 14” x 14”.

The intent behind this second exercise lays within sustained visual engagement and larger compositional understanding. This assignment is a method for slowing down, elevating awareness of material configurations that form infrastructure, and guarantee exposure to those form factors pertinent to infrastructural operation.

The act of drawing is a vehicle for knowing.

Each 14” x 14” graphite rendering is centered on a 18” x 24” sheet of Strathmore 400 series paper.