Artist Pamela Hunt Lee: Public Art IV

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Public Art IV

More Work On Detours-Kings Beach

Public Art Project

Lake of the Sky

108" x 52"

Detours-Kings Beach-2014. A site specific public art exhibition taking place August 22-Oct 1. Twelve artists were invited to participate and if you follow this blog you already know I am one of them. My site is a towering Jeffrey Pine Tree adjacent to the North Tahoe Event Center patio, just off the beach in Kings Beach. The tree will be wrapped by one of my paintings which has been cut into strips. The completed painting, seen above, was inspired by the location.

Painted in a stylized, expressionistic manner, with loads of intense color and freedom of movement it is ready to be cut into the strips that will hang down around the trunk of the pine tree where it will be installed.

Detail of the bottom part of the painting.

Detail of the top left corner of the painting.

One more step before the cutting, apply the foam piece to the back of the painting. This was a requirement from CA State Parks to protect the bark of the tree. In the photo above you see the foam strip after it was glued to the canvas.

This painting has a great deal of weight and body due to the layers of gesso and pigment applied to the canvas. Knowing it would be easier to cut it into strips if it was warm, I decided to lay the painting out in the sun where it was sizzling.

The strips were cut with scissors after marking a path. The warmth of the sun made the slicing almost effortless.

This is a picture of the painting after the strips were cut. I decided to leave the top together for ease of handling and hanging.

When working on a painting of this size, a good sized brush is used and pigment applied quite liberally. I spend quite a bit of time looking at the work from a distance, not really paying too much attention to detail, so it was interesting to be sitting on the painting, with scissors, cutting through, looking at the detail.

Once the painting is hung on the tree the strips will fall down along the trunk and as long as it is a calm day the strips will hang vertically. But should the wind come up, the strips will ribbon. Perhaps they will look something like the image below.

Final preparation of the painting prior to installation found me creating rolls of the strips which were taped in place. This makes moving and handling the work much easier than if the strips were loose.