Art Transforms a Home Office

How can art help create an office?  Like many people, my daughter has found herself working out of a room that was never intended to be an office.  I recently asked her to describe the effect some new artwork had on her workspace. Here is what she wrote:

“I hung this piece earlier this summer after I had been working from home for several months. While I am so thankful to be gainfully employed during a global pandemic, transitioning to working full time at home and converting my small DC bedroom into my office was incredibly hard on my mental health. I missed my morning office routine, greeting my colleagues, and feeling productive and centered as I set down my coffee and sat down to work. To make matters worse, I didn’t know when it will be safe for me to travel to see my parents again, making the feelings of isolation even more noticeable…

Vertical-monoprint-collage-home-office
After the Torrent graces my daughter Hannah’s bedroom office.
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Considering the negative…space, that is

I have been trying to integrate what I saw in my travels this summer, and I’ve been pondering the question of negative space…
But before I share my noodlings with you, I need to reveal my sea fan experiment from last month. After printing the light fan shapes and the darker water, I added some coral shapes in the background. It amazes me how adding a brighter and darker color makes the water so much lighter and does add lots more depth. The coral shapes have three colors in order to hint at dimensionality. There is a great deal of activity in the work, and not many places for the eye to rest. I often need to live with a linocut for a while before I decide if it will make it to a frame, or get flipped and used as a test print.
Sea Fan linocut. It doesn’t get a name unless it warrants a frame!
So back to negative space — or in the design world, “white space.” There are lots of famous examples of the use of white space. This about the face/vase illusion for example. In all of these, the positive and negative spaces make your brain work to decide what it is seeing.

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