Sustained Investigation #10

The Bridge

27” x 7.5”

Acrylic on wood

Along my many journeys at Alzar, we had expedition blocks that lasted for two weeks straight in the wilderness. While in Parque Patagonia in Chile, we came across this thin, rickety looking bridge that spanned a some 80 foot cavern over the river below. This experience of crossing the bridge was something I will never forget as it shuddered underneath the weight of my 50 pound bag and I. Seeing this, I took the opportunity to express my investigation and link this experience with skateboarding. I chose to make this art because this experience was one that stuck with me from my trip.

This was made by cutting the shape of the skateboard out of a piece of poplar wood, from a new design that I made myself by stretching the shape from my 8th sustained investigation. Then I began to sand it to refine the shape and bevel the edges of the board all around. Using skateboard trucks I lined them up on the board and centered them to the center line, and proceeded to drill the holes making sure to counter sink for the bolts. Then I started painting with a blue wash to show the grain through and began to build up the layers with different tones and highlights off of my memory of the bridge. I went from the back with the trees and mountains and move towards the gorge. I wanted to make the bridge the center piece so I put a lot of work in that area to draw you attention to it. To finish it off and make it look more clean, I added a black border all around and signed the bottom of it.

In this artwork, I used color in all of the colors I mixed together to get the image I was looking for and value in all of the different values of the colors I made to get shadows and highlights. I used texture and form a lot in the way I made the trees and the rocks as well as in the gorge. My project evolved because although I knew how I was going to mainly set up the artwork, I didn't sketch it out, so there are things the didn't turn out how I thought. Originally I thought that I was going to include the river in the gorge but the angle for it was a little off. Next time, I could try to add more detail into the pieces, or make them more realistic looking.