Ingrid Calame is an American artist based in Los Angeles, known for her abstract, map-like paintings inspired by human detritus.
Calame’s works come from a painstaking process of recording cracks and stains from the physical environment. She first began tracing the shapes, textures and stains on pavements, cultural and industrial sites, reconstructing the places that have been overlooked or disregarded.
#334 Drawing (Tracings from the L.A. River and ArcelorMittal Steel), 2011; coloured pencil on trace Mylar; 285 x 183 cm (112 x 72 in)
Drawings #334 and #346 reveal part of Calame’s intensive process. Calame and her team obtained tracings from the dried-out concrete riverbed of the L.A. River, hand-stenciled numbers on the factory floors of the ArcelorMittal Steel factory floors, and from the cracks in an abandoned wading pool at the Perry Street Projects in Buffalo, New York. These tracings were then assembled and retraced in colored pencil to form the final layered drawings.
#346 Drawing (Tracing from the Perry Street Projects Wading Pool, Buffalo, NY), 2011; coloured pencil on trace Mylar; 183 x 285 cm (72 x 112 in)
“I go to specific locations to trace marks, stains and cracks on the ground on to architectural Mylar. From these tracings I make drawings and paintings. I clean the original tracings and layer them on top of each other. Once I’ve piled up the tracings, I place several rectangles of drafting Mylar on top of them. This determines the size of the drawings I will eventually make. I then start to trace the layers of rubbings that are beneath the rectangles, with a different color pencil for each layer, peeling back the layers one by one until I reach the bottom of the pile. The final drawings are always a surprise.” – Ingrid Calame
Drawings 179, 181, and 182 were generated by tracing the silhouettes of stains found on the streets of Los Angeles.
INGRID CALAME, # 179 Working Drawing, 2005, color pencil on trace Mylar, 176 x 88 inches INGRID CALAME, # 179 Working Drawing, 2005, color pencil on trace Mylar, 176 x 88 inches INGRID CALAME, # 182 Working Drawing, 2005, color pencil on trace Mylar, 88 x 88 inches INGRID CALAME, # 181 Working Drawing, 2005, color pencil on trace Mylar, 176 x 88 inches
Today’s V. Note is a collection of nativity scenes, ordered starting in the present day and walking back in time. The last images, the earliest depictions, are from 4th Century in Rome and Southern Gaul. I’ve added a few works, but most of this collection can be found on Wikipedia and The Guardian. It is one of the …
Exercise your creativity This SAL Challenge is a vocabulary based creative challenge every day for January. Materials are artist’s choice. You can draw, paint, sew, collage, sculpt your food, anything you want. See below for today’s creative challenge. Set the timer for 20 minutes and see what happens. ERINACEOUS adj. – of, pertaining to, or …
One of the best and most influential comic book artists of all time, Jean Giraud was born in Paris France in 1938, and drew under the pen name Moebius, after the German mathematician who created the Moebius strip. The French artist was famous in America for illustrating series such as the Silver Surfer parables published …
As a young child, Pippin attended a segregated one-room school in Goshen, New York. When he was ten years old, he answered a magazine advertisement and received a box of crayon pencils, paint, and two brushes. At age 15 Pippin left school to care for his ailing mother. She died when he was 23, and …
Colored Pencil Drawings by Ingrid Calame
Ingrid Calame is an American artist based in Los Angeles, known for her abstract, map-like paintings inspired by human detritus.
Calame’s works come from a painstaking process of recording cracks and stains from the physical environment. She first began tracing the shapes, textures and stains on pavements, cultural and industrial sites, reconstructing the places that have been overlooked or disregarded.
Drawings #334 and #346 reveal part of Calame’s intensive process. Calame and her team obtained tracings from the dried-out concrete riverbed of the L.A. River, hand-stenciled numbers on the factory floors of the ArcelorMittal Steel factory floors, and from the cracks in an abandoned wading pool at the Perry Street Projects in Buffalo, New York. These tracings were then assembled and retraced in colored pencil to form the final layered drawings.
“I go to specific locations to trace marks, stains and cracks on the ground on to architectural Mylar. From these tracings I make drawings and paintings. I clean the original tracings and layer them on top of each other. Once I’ve piled up the tracings, I place several rectangles of drafting Mylar on top of them. This determines the size of the drawings I will eventually make. I then start to trace the layers of rubbings that are beneath the rectangles, with a different color pencil for each layer, peeling back the layers one by one until I reach the bottom of the pile. The final drawings are always a surprise.” – Ingrid Calame
Drawings 179, 181, and 182 were generated by tracing the silhouettes of stains found on the streets of Los Angeles.
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Today’s V. Note is a collection of nativity scenes, ordered starting in the present day and walking back in time. The last images, the earliest depictions, are from 4th Century in Rome and Southern Gaul. I’ve added a few works, but most of this collection can be found on Wikipedia and The Guardian. It is one of the …
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