end-to-end
A graphic design commission series
Catering to New York's graphic design community, this carte-blanche commissioning series repurposed the façade of LentSpace’s operable fence along Sullivan Street as a showcase for designers unbound by the typical constraints of commercial work. Considering that the operable fence had several independently rotating panel sections, which opened to allow entry into LentSpace, each project faced a unique design challenge. When ajar, the surface on which the end-to-end commission was attached became discontinuous and broke the linearity of each design. In light of this constraint, this series took its name from a form of train mural painting, wherein an artwork that covered the entirety of a train was said to be done from “end-to-end”. Among fellow artists, a master “end-to-end” needed to account for the gaps between the rail cars and blended this formal element into the overall content of the artwork via “marriages” of images across the voids.
Currently on view through Spring 2010:
THUMB
O.D.D., 2009
Re-casting environmental phenomena into new sensory impressions, Thumb’s O.D.D. transforms this frontage into a mirage-like entry, utilizing an array of reflective blue and silver aluminum disks that shift with the wind as well as reflect gentle ripples of light. Optically, the interaction between these two colors is patterned so that the density of blue verse silver palettes will vary and produce a differentiated design that is notational as well as aesthetic. Beyond simply adding variation, these aggregations will delineate four key “hot-points” of the operable fence as identified by Thumb and LentSpace’s architects which correspond to the four main pathways of the site. In able to make this legible, the density of blue palettes will be deployed in a series of dual-tapers that become widest at the center of these major axes.
