Roberto Clemente Statue and Its Surroundings
8/28/2019
Assignment Goals:
- visit an intersection I haven’t been to before
- record the atmosphere and environment of the location using drawings, photos, audio recordings, and text
Over-arching question: What can/did I take away from a trip to the PNC Park/the Roberto Clemente Statue?
I leave CMU campus around 6:00pm and arrive at the intersection close to 7. On the bus, I pass school districts, universities such as Duquesne University, and some more “shady” areas. A lot of the buildings in these less sophisticated neighborhoods feel like brick boxes and lack proper windows.
First of all, I know nothing about baseball, so I am a bit nervous when I walk across Roberto Clemente Bridge to see the PNC Park in the distance.
Across from the bronze Roberto Clemente statue is the stadium entrance, where game seekers can line up to get their bags checked. There is a plaque on the side of the entrance that lists the stadium rules, including their strict intolerance for “the use of derogatory language by any guest, employee or visitor to PNC Park.” I appreciate a subtle sign of sportsmanship.
However, much of this “Roberto Clemente Statue” intersection is about what was around the stadium rather the stadium itself. To the left of the stadium entrance are stairs that lead to the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. At the bottom of the stairs I can see the underbelly of the Roberto Clemente Bridge and even a hidden kayak rental location.
While the area around the stadium entrance and the bronze status is void of visitors except for office employees or passing cars, there are more traffic at this lower level close to the river. Runners, dog-walkers, and cyclists (who utilize the two-way bike lane) travel on this trail. The opening of the Allegheny River, Fort Duquesne Bridge, and the cityscape of Pittsburg create a spacious and relaxing environment for those in the midst of their leisure activities.
These are some audio recordings that point to particular noisemakers within my intersection.
9/2/2019
Assignment Goals:
- Identify what I have learned from the first intersection assignment
- Visit the intersection again and discuss how I applied my new knowledge towards describing my intersection through photos
The three main take-aways I had from the last critique was: 1) Don’t take panorama photos, 2) don’t zoom in so much that you can’t identify the position and surroundings of the object you are zooming into and 3) make my photos contain more faucets such as sound and movement.
For this second visit, I focused mainly on the bus trip there and the night scene of the intersection.
Since this was my second time travelling this route, I imagined how a seasoned rider would identify their stop before arriving. One obvious point is the amount of right/left turns the bus makes. Other opportunities of identification includes seeing where the tall buildings disappear to reveal a more flattened landscape such as the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall.
Also, if certain advertisements stay on the same walls, I can understand if people react after seeing a familiar dress or Caucasian model sporting a grey suit.
I mentioned the neighborhood transformations in the previous entry, but this time I had a different observation. When the bus transitioned from a poor neighborhood to a business hub, the font of the store and building signs immediately change. Instead of crazy fonts that illustrate the exoticism of Chinese or Mexican cuisine, the sans serif fonts that labelled office buildings and bus stations seemed more refined and readable.
At the actual intersection, I applied more of the design studio tips. Instead of zooming into a singular object or space, I tried capturing the entire scene.
Since it was a Friday evening, there were way more local people walking around. Some were enjoying a quiet time on the grass while others were drinking on a neon yacht. To each their own.
These are my attempts to capture movement in my photos, from walking couples to half of a speeding bicycle.
Although my previous entry only focused on the Roberto Clemente statue, around 20 yards across from the Clemente statue is the Willie Stargell statue swinging a baseball bat.
With Stargell staring in the direction of Clemente, it is obvious that the two statues are supposed to complement each other. However, since I cannot use the panorama function on my phone camera, I had to force both statues into the same frame. While the shot is less clear at night, there is a short silhouette in the distant that represents the Clemente statue running towards Stargell.
As I packed up my stuff and walked back to my bus stop, I was able to capture the lit-up trail along the river. Although I wasn’t able to find out in my first visit, I finally learned that the small building floating in the river (bottom right corner) is the Allegheny River Safety Center. The inside was a lit up space to park boats, but the photo I took of the center’s interior did not inform the center’s location relative to the rest of the intersection.
9/5/2019
Assignment Goals:
- Pick a photo that best represents my intersection
- make a 7 x 7 in. paper relief out of the image using only white paper
Already at the beginning of the project, I was met with an obstacle. I was choosing between two photos: one that had the Roberto Clemente statue dead in the center and one that didn’t have the statue at all. Because of time constraints, I couldn’t go back to my intersection to take the perfect photo, so I was torn between my options.
There are pro’s and con’s for both. The first photo is the most recognizable one, but depicting the statue as the center piece also seemed like I was picking a low hanging fruit. The second photo is definitely more unclear as to where the intersection is. However, I believe that the composition of the second photo seems more interesting and that the stairs and stadium structure would adequately represent the intersection.
After picking the second photo, I printed a black and white, 7 x 7 in. version of the image and used tracing paper + light board to flesh out the abstract shapes.
The top of the image looked a little empty, so I also added some of the evening 8:00pm clouds in the background.
Then, I started cutting out the pieces, starting with the bottom half of the staircase and the diagonal handrails.
During the cutting and assembling process, I had 3 major issues.
First: while I was cutting out these delicate pieces, I was having a hard time keeping the white paper clean. I had to constantly erase and even had to use my white color pencil to cover some smudges.
Second: I realized this particular image had a lot of background layers. Although I had built up 3 layers of paper (4 including the 7 x 7 in blank square), I hadn’t included the tall stadium structure that was further in the background. Therefore, I decided to cut the shape of the stadium structure out of the 7 x 7 (that I haven’t touched up to this point). I then cut out the innards of the structure from a different 7 x 7.
This is what it looks like layering the two pieces on top of each other.
Because the project required a completely white surface, I added another piece of white rectangular paper under the two layers to fulfill that requirement.
After reaching this step of the process I now have 6 layers of paper: 3 for the foreground objects + 3 for the stadium structure and buildings in the background.
After solving this problem, I proceeded to cut out any remaining miscellaneous shapes such as trees and little people.
The assembling part of the process was actually the easiest, because I had pre-glued some detailed sections of the image, such as that piece on the bottom left corner.
After gluing everything together, I was met with my third problem: creating the relief effect. There was honestly not much to do because many of the pieces were immobile; however, I tried folding and embossing certain aspects of the image such as the trees, clouds, and staircase so that there were darker shadows for contrast.
Potential Improvements for the next paper relief assignment:
- try experimenting more with texture (tearing, embossing, scratching etc.)
- try playing with more abstraction so that not every building or tree needs to look realistic
- although background objects are far away (such as the clouds), try making them more prominent next time so that they don’t disappear and become unnoticeable
- realize that paper cutting is a marathon and that the more I finish, the closer I am to the invisible finish line
9/8/2019
Assignment Goals:
- Re-do the white-on-white assignment by improving on the previous version
After the critique, I had three ways of improving my first relief.
First, instead of peeling the pieces away from its background to create more shadows, I decided to double up the layers on certain pieces. Here, I added small rectangular paper to the handrails and the little people.
Before, when I peeled away the handrails and people, they became warped and lost their ability to portray perspective. Therefore, the viewer can only focus on the floppy handrails and nothing else in the entire image.
Second, I eliminated and added certain elements to make the image less cluttered with details. I drew a thumbnail of the original relief and planned out the changes that I would make.
An example of elimination is that I realized I had too many handrails. I turned every one into an abstract shape, but I didn’t need that many to express perspective and that the blocks in the foreground are stairs. An example of addition still goes back to the handrails. Before, I only included the horizontal bars which people hold onto and not the vertical poles holding the bars up. For this second version, I added the vertical poles so the handrails are grounded to the stairs rather than floating in space.
The third improvement is the replacement of the embossing I did on the original version. I used my bone folder to emboss the clouds, trees, and stairs. However, the textures I tried to created didn’t show up when the relief was hung up on the walls. Even up close, the clouds were disappearing into the background and had too small of a presence in the composition.
Therefore I abandoned the embossing technique in this new version and tried two other methods. First, for straight lines such as the stairs and rectangular structures, I cut thin lines with my X-acto knife. While embossing created a shallow and thick line, cutting was precise and created enough of a cavern for a thin shadow to appear.
For the clouds, I knew I couldn’t use my knife because of its complex and random form (I already struggled when I cut out the small trees). However, I still wanted the clouds in the back ground since the top half of the composition feels empty.
I tried three different ways of creating the texture of clouds. This way I can just fill in the cloud shape with texture instead of outlining the cloud shape with much difficulty.
After comparing the three textures, I like #1 the best. #3 was the original embossing I used on the trees. I tried to make it look less like scribbles, but I haven’t mastered the different ways of using a bone folder yet. #2 was the first idea I had after the critique: adding wear to paper so that the cloud looks fluffy and natural. However, I think #2 has too much of a presence, especially with the dark shadows under the cloud.
For #3, I laid an X-acto knife flat and scratched at the paper’s surface. The small tufts of paper that lift off the page is enough to convey the texture of the clouds. #3 Seems subtle and purposeful.
After applying these three improvements to my new relief, I believe I created a better balance with my image. There are less shapes that pop out unnecessarily and I learned new methods of depicting texture. I hope to apply the new knowledge to the tonal relief.
9/11/2019
Assignment Goals:
- using the same picture as the white-on-white reliefs, make a new version with four tones of brown
I first drew thumbnails of where I wanted to place my darkest and lightest shades of brown.
Top left was colored similarly to the original photo. The stadium structure is the darkest shape while the highlights on the handrails make them the lightest. I then tried to make a night version in the top right. The objects in the background grow darker and darker while the foreground looks like as if a flashlight was shone on it.
After these initial thumbnails, I remembered the photographs from the previous class and a unique characteristic they have. There is usually a smooth gradient between dark to light tones. Rarely did the lightest color touch the darkest one. Therefore, I tried to create a more simple transition in the bottom left thumbnail. In the bottom right, I made the people the lightest color and have their surroundings slowly turn darker.
I like the bottom left thumbnail the best because it captured the layers of stairs and structures in the original photo.
During the actual assemblage process, I used similar methods from before. I cut in a frugal manner so that I save paper. I double layered the people and the handrails so that they weren’t lost within their surroundings. Since I used the darkest shade the least, I used it as the back board for my entire composition. I tried to keep my workspace organized so that I don’t lose the small cutouts or accidentally throw them away.
Because I glued multiple layers of paper to create the background (compared to the white-on-white where I used one layer), I had a lot of material hanging outside of the 7 x 7 inch frame. I just had to slice the extras off.
My finished piece ended up looking like my original thumbnail.
I think the gradient method may be a bit cliché, considering many book covers and illustrations use this sort of darkest-to-lightest trick to create depth. However, I wanted my relief to be as comprehensible as possible, so randomly placing different tones in the frame would have made the image lose the essence of the intersection and instead be a display of interesting color choices.
9/16/2019
Assignment Goals:
- Re-do the tonal relief using the feedback given from critique
During critique, my gradient relief was rated high in complexity but extremely low in readability. My peers can see the piece’s craftsmanship, but the overlapping of similar tones made certain elements such as handrails and the stadium structure in the background to be unrecognizable.
I saw that other people were very open with using contrast (ex. putting the lightest tone right next to the darkest tone). Although sometimes that method resulted in a jarring contrast, many were able to clearly differentiate people or moving vehicles from the stagnant buildings and streets. Therefore, I wanted to step out of my bubble to experiment more with tones and what affect they can create.
I spent a lot more time with thumbnails and seeing how subtle changes can affect readability.
I started with using pencil because I can easily erase or darken the tones I wanted to change. After getting feedback from my tablemates, I picked the second thumbnail from the first row to focus on. The four thumbnails show me slightly changing the colors of the people and the columns to achieve a better balance of tone. There are some aspects of the original thumbnail which I didn’t change. I wanted to place emphasis on the stairs, so I kept it the darkest tone. Moreover, since the stadium disappeared in the background last time, I made it the second darkest tone.
During the assembling process, I tried not using a 7 x 7 in square as a backing for the first time. My composition started with a rectangle where I focused on the clouds and the stadium structure.
Because I didn’t use a backing to mark where 7 x 7 in ended, I realized my composition shifted slightly downward. I also had to adapt certain pieces to this shift to fit every paper cut out within the square frame.
This is the finished version.
I am glad that I tried placing tones more in their appropriate places rather than labeling a general area as a certain tone. In terms of small details, I eliminated the cyclist that used to reside in the bottom right corner because the critiquing group thought that figure was unnecessary when seeing the composition in a holistic manner. I also added the clouds back in because I needed more contrast between the background and the stadium structure.
9/18/2019
Assignment Goals:
- Make another relief which substitutes certain shapes from your tonal relief with a color
- Mat the three different reliefs (white-on-white, tonal, color) and scan your finished products
The color decision happened really quickly, because most of the colors the professor provided didn’t make much sense to me, such as the bright blue, red, and orange. Even though the Pittsburgh Pirates’ colors are black, white and gold, none of those colors were apparent from the perspective of the photo I was referencing. Because much of the stadium itself is painted with a navy blue, that was the color I ended up choosing.
I knew I wanted the stadium structure to be blue.
However, having color only in the top half of the composition gives the image a top heavy feeling. Therefore, I decided to also make the top half of the stairs the navy blue so that the blue appears more often in the relief.
I also made some other minor changes which I documented in this thumbnail:
After I completed my color relief, I matted my three final reliefs to a black mat board (7 inch square mounted on a 10 inch square = 1.5 black margins) and scanned them in the Reese cluster.
