How does your practice reflect, contain, or examine aspects of wildness?

As a painter and an architectural colorist, color, light, and architectural form are the central elements of my work, and a recent two month Astra Zarina Fellowship presented me with the privilege of going to Italy to study these elements firsthand and to observe their interaction with the orderliness and the “wildness” of nature and landscape.

Louis Kahn stated that “Natural light is the giver of all presence”, and Italy sings endless arias of light on its landscapes and architecture. The light, and therefore the colors in central Italy are constantly shifting, from morning to evening, from day to day, and from season to season. Yet underpinning these often wild and dramatic shifts of color and light, one immediately senses strict and elegant limits of proportion in the landscape and in the architecture, which have guided mankind from the beginning of time.

Within the strict and elegant proportions of landscape, architecture, and painting, there are always opportunities for poetic wildness. As I wandered among the narrow streets of many of the hill towns I documented, I discovered poetic and ravaged wall surfaces with rich and wild palettes of ochre, umber, cinnamon, terra cotta reds, burnt sienna, charcoal, terre verde, ultramarine, and dull pinks. Within the fading frescoes and peeling paint of these wall surfaces, I found everything~~ order, disorder, and a loss of structure and perfection, speaking volumes of the ravages of human interaction, time, and atmosphere. These walls also spoke to me of the nature of painting itself….echoing the false starts, the afterthoughts, and the intuition that for me make up the joys of painting.

I’ve long believed that painters and architects share a deep connection, in our love of form and space and color. These formal elements of our practice create the necessary boundaries which allow us to transcend structure and formalism, coaxing poetry from paint and transforming our materials and spaces into spiritual substance. This is where the wildness of our process lives.

Tuesday, September 11 at 1:23pm

I think of the design process as a type of “interaction”. One’s intentions for occupying a “wild” space will influence actions distinguished as “unsupervised” or “supervised”. And, one’s philosophy of stewardship (which is based on a philosophy of interaction) will determine the degree and extent which they “impose” their design actions upon the environment and others.

In regard to “nature” & “wildness”, the question which I think enables great flexibility for the integration of nature and human-interaction is, “how might one’s design actions influence people and the space/environment throughout time?”. I attempt to pursue constraints (design decisions) which enable others to utilize multiple objectives as they interact with the object & environment. For example, in designing a fishing pole I am inclined to integrate the ability for its use as a walking stick and/or a bow.

The innate characteristic of humanity, and some would say “nature”, is the ability to create. As such, “constraints” influence how one will interact with the design, whatever that may be. And, I view my (the designers) design “constraints” equally to the “constraints” others might place on my design. I believe that this view of “constraint” affirms the reality that all people will respond uniquely to their environment and things proximal to them. They will utilize their creative power to uniquely interact with objects, people, and their environment. As such, I view this as a type of “wildness”.

Designing for several-possible outcomes is my preference. And, utilizing forces of nature, like gravity and other experienced, but unseen elements of physics is one of my design pleasures. I think “wildness” is sometimes used as a distinction between “nature” and “humanity”. However, I believe the two are intimately connected. And, what is consider “wild” is usually a reference to a feeling of not having control and something outside of one’s “autonomous” thoughts and feelings. As such, one of my design values is to communicate the connectedness between something that is seemingly “out one’s control”.

Thursday, September 13 at 3:47pm

The resonance and discord of nature and the man-made is demonstrated in clear and repetitive detail against the backdrop of the great plains of the western United States. Buildings created for various purposes—libraries, schoolhouses, churches, farmhouses—vie against the landscape for survival. Inevitably the landscape wins, at least to the extent that with time it literally absorbs these various structural interruptions of the land’s continuity.

The plains themselves were transmuted by man’s intervention, from grasslands to farmlands, with varying degrees of consequences, from dustbowl destruction to unsustainable harvesting. These now-abandoned buildings represent vestiges of the early success of migrant culture in establishing a new frontier at the beginning of the 20th century and taming the wild lands, while at the same time they belie the ambition of long-term relevance and sustainability.

The buildings, embedded in the landscape as they are, are beautiful, and in some ways they have become more integrated in the landscape as abandoned structures than when they were first constructed, as though the passing of time has made their presence more tolerable to the land upon which they sit, with the buildings bending and crumbling into the wildness as they disintegrate.

Totems—objects that were constructed by a particular group of people to represent their culture and beliefs in their absence—seems a particularly apt title for the series of photographs that I have made of these buildings. Though they are no longer in use, they project the character and culture of the now-absent people who made them. In fact, in many cases, looking at these structures against the background of the great plains, one can perceive in them something of the souls of the men and women who once thrived under their roofs. This is manifest to such an extent that the individual structures become anthropomorphic: hunched, rundown, aged, but nonetheless proud and radiating history and anecdote. As a culture, we have much to learn from them, if we choose.

Peter Kayafas is represented by Sasha Wolf Gallery.
http://sashawolf.com/artists/peter-kayafas/

Thursday, September 13 at 4:05pm

Do we define wild as that which is untamed, unframed or restrained? Is there some other governing attribute of wildness that can serve to coalesce our perception of what is wild and what is not? Where does control factor in? Can we say something is wild if we can begin to control and manipulate its changing form?

Can we speak about degrees of wildness? or is it a categorical imperative – either a thing or a person is wild or they are not? Does wildness lie outside the bounds of language?

Can wildness be subtle or must it be dramatic? can it be evidenced in shifts which are nearly imperceptible? It is form or is it tendency?

Is it something to which we assign a value? Is it better to be a wild horse than a domesticated dog?

Does it lie in those things with which man has not yet engaged? Or can I cultivate wildness within a given set of terms?

http://www.joanwaltemath.net

Friday, September 14 at 12:38pm

Dustin Faddis mentioned above that constraints influence the way people respond to design. The lack of control in the individual response implies an inherent wildness in the outcome.

Yet for me, the idea of wildness exists at the outset of the working process. Setting up constraints to work within and around (and at times, ignore all together) is the creative act. It generates a form for communication, a system to transmit a set of ideas.

It is a process that begins almost immediately. When I stare at a blank page there is always moment of hesitation. But the structures and systems are built quickly by factors both within and beyond my control. What are the dimensions of the blank page? Will it be printed or exist digitally? How many blank pages are there? The decisions continue to shape the form—typographic choice, paper choice, column width, leading, systems of informational hierarchy.

These are the sets of constraints I build in my practice of graphic design. The blank page soon has a grid system underlying it. I organize, I place, I create a set of rules and boxes to work within. The “pasteboard”—the area around my blank page—is littered with duplicate images, experiments, attempts at clarity. This act of building a system of rules is one that I think is common to the creative endeavor. Each discipline has its own set of tools to create forms and structures, and ultimately, shape wildness into meaning.

Sunday, September 16 at 12:56pm

As a designer whose work most often centers on the examination and employment of color in the built world I am constantly interacting with the omnipresent forces of nature and how they impact my choices. Light is the most mercurial and dynamic aspect of nature in my practice. Without light we do not see color and consequently our perception of color is completely dependent on how light interacts with everything in our field of vision. It takes little more than changing the type of lightbulb, lowering a shade or the simple passing of a cloud to “change” the color we see.

As I work with my clients I am often amused by the metaphorical subtext that exists when we discuss letting go of the desire to “control” color and allowing architecture, light sources and other extant factors determine how the color selected will appear and “behave” in the space under consideration. Color can provoke in many people a fear of something natural or wild (color) escaping and wreaking havoc. Many clients tell me that they cannot live with certain colors, suggesting that color alone can create an untenable living environment. I see this as the human impulse to control and even retreat from nature. My task is to help people examine this provocative and personal “wilderness” and consequently broaden their understanding of color. This in turn tends to peak their interest, sharpen their visual skills and provide them with a confidence and willingness to explore the possibilities of living with more color in their own environments.

Thursday, September 20 at 11:14am