Pulling Pants
5.5”h x 3.5”w
pen, pencil, marker, paper
Reading Out Loud
acrylic, paper
14"h x 9"w inches
Torso Facing
limestone, Danish oil, pigment
36”h x 13”w x 4”d
(base is 13”h x 2.5”w x 13”d, wood, paint)
Copyright © 2007. Miriam Martincic. All rights reserved.
Flatness and volume are important in both my two and three-dimensional work.
“Pulling Pants” works with both flatness and volume. The image is spatially believable—there is play of light and shadow in the eye sockets, jaw line, and other facial features, and the left leg sits clearly behind the right. Yet the image is also spatially ambiguous. The undivided background must at once be both horizontal ground plane and vertical wall space, yet there are no perspective lines or shadows to suggest either. This creates a spatial impossibiltity in that if the plane of the picture is vertical wall space, the figure has no ground to stand on and feels as if she might slide off of the page. On the other hand, if the plane of the picture is horizontal floor space, the mirror floats impossibly in mid-air.
Space is further negated by a t-shirt which, though it casts a shadow suggesting its’ dimensionality, is flattened by a thick outline that makes it feel hollow. We reasonably assume that there is space between the figure and the mirror. In the structure of the image, however, they exist side by side. This occurs because the green line of the t-shirt merges with its image in the mirror, and because the reflection of the face in the mirror and the back of the head are of equal size which puts them in the same plane in space rather than one in front of the other.
A volumetric aspect of “Reading Out Loud” is depth created through scale change of the figures and doorframes. The image, however, is not just a realistic scene with a simplified color scheme. Rather than true perspective, “Reading Out Loud” works with isometric perspective. As parallel lines recede in space they do not converge but remain parallel. Additionally, the image is flattened though coloration. Volumetric figures are treated as flat silhouettes of bold color, and though in terms of scale, one silhouette is spatially closer than another, their identical coloration places them at an equal depth.
Flatness and volume are complimentary to one another in “Torso Facing.” The flat front, precisely through its absence of volume, emphasizes the volumetric qualities of the backside. Thus flatness becomes a quality of volume just as negative space is a type of space and black (in terms of light) is the absence of color. The placement of flatness and space also create meaning in the sculpture as front becomes facade while the back, the side that is not facing, unexpectedly offers more information.