Jen. A.'s Hearty Hearts!

SUMMER LOVE

When we were given the assignment to design a piece of art in the form of a heart, I began with thinking what a heart symbolizes, which is love.  It was only natural for me to want to design something about love with my children.  Within the design I wanted to include something they love, which is summer at the beach.  For both images, the background is the beach, which adds to the theme of the entire piece.  I repeated the theme in both images to produce a series to tell a story together, in similar, but very different designs.

Line is a strong element for the basis of the design.  I used pool noodles to form the outline or silhouette of the heart and filled it with media: my children and their summer necessities (bathing suits, sunglasses and tubes).  In image 2, the water actually serves as media because it is part of the live sculpture, as well as serving as the background.

I used stronger “gesture” lines in the first design by posing the girls in a way that shows liveliness, to create a sense of movement in the still piece: curving their hips, pursing lips, feet slightly apart.  The straighter lines in the second piece and the floating in the still water exhibit a sense of relaxation.  Put together, both pieces tell two different stories of what summer can be: fun and lively or calm and relaxing. 

The color scheme of both pieces themselves are monochromatic because everything inside of the designs are shades of reds with varying tint combined with neutrals.  This was a happy accident when I discovered our pool toys were all in the same color family, so we looked for bathing suits and sunglasses to fit the color scheme.  My older daughter did not have a pink or red bathing suit, so we put her in a neutral color to maintain the monochromatic color scheme.  Using multiple shades of one color also gives the design a sense of solidarity and harmony.  When looking at the photographs as a whole, the piece becomes polychromatic because of all the colors in the background.

The props I used create repetition within the design because everything is used twice: once per child.  The theme is also repeated from one design to the next.  Both “sculptures” are set on the same beach, but because the placement and activity are differnt, they become two separate pieces. 

The balance of the pieces can be viewed in two different ways.  The hearts themselves as live sculptures are near-symmetrical because each side of the heart has very similar weight: one kid, one bathing suit, one tube (image 2), one pair of sunglasses, and half of the noodle heart.  It cannot be perfect symmetry because my children are different sizes.  As photographs, both pieces are composed using the Fibonacci Spiral to give them informal balance.  My younger daughter’s head falls in the beginning point of the Fibonacci Grid, resulting in mathematically balanced photographs.