Yasmin Bobyk-Salazar

I recently completed my freshmen year in the College of Interior Design. The emphases of the two semesters included the visualization and feelings of forms creating various spaces, having a unique quality. Currently, I am on the Dean's List and with this project I won the Freshmen Award of the student show 2003, and the Most Creative Juror's Award. In the future, I wish to continue being creative and enjoying what I'm doing.

This project was assigned to me while I was taking the second semester of my freshmen year. The objectives provided by Prof. K. Shastri were adding light as a phenomenon and its interaction with color, texture, and shades/shadows. The first step in crating the sculpture was the development of five spaces through the “intersection of solids in space” by ocean waves, which were the source of my inspiration. This “intersection” was represented in the rough sketch in the background on this page.

After having the structure made of cooper wire mesh, I applied color to it. In order to persuade the human eye, I used broken hues taken from nature. As a result, the colors on the sculpture are yellow citron mixed with cooper and red violet. All of the colors can be found in nature, as shown in the two photographs of sea creatures, from which I chose my palette. For the texture I wanted to create a sentiment of excitement, therefore, some parts of the wire mesh were pressed, while others were sprayed with glitter of different colors, as shown in the close-up view on the opposite side of this page.

With all these details, the final sculpture has shiny reflections of light making it vibrant and interesting to the human eye, which is the result of our eyes being capable of “reading” the colors and values and associating them with psychological feelings. With light sources coming from multiple angles, the sculpture casts interesting shadows. When the top part is illuminated, it looks as if it is floating. When the light source is coming from the back, it is more settled. With the shadows, it gives the sensation of movement.

Color and Texture

Vision is the result of the stimulation of nerve cells in the retina of the eye, signaling patterns of light intensity and color. As a result, our perception separates objects in space. For clarifying the arrangement in space, we apply tonal values. In order to persuade the human eye to a positive feeling about an object, in this case a sculpture, we have to employ the right value of color. In nature, for example, most colors are seen as broken, because we do not live in a world with pure colors. As a result, the most desirable colors, the most compatible, and the least tiring to the human eye are the colors that do not have a pure hue.

By the use of glitter, we can create a feeling of excitement. The shiny reflection of the light source on the glitter makes the sculpture vibrant, happy, and interesting. This occurs because, the eye is able to “read” the colors and the values and associate them with some psychological feeling. On the other hand, by looking at the texture in our mind, we can relate it to something that we have seen before. Our mind could send the message of touching the object, so we can connect the visual sensation with a tactile sensation.