During the STEAM festival, Seminar 1 and Seminar 3 students shared a space to explore projects focused on the arts and science. My partner and I presented our piece: La Guardia by Nancy Goldring, which was a work hung in the upper floors of Baruch. One of the fascinating aspects of her art that we researched was her way of creating it. Goldring uses a general method to create her art: first, she makes a drawing to act as a basis. Then, she takes snippets of slides she has taken and merges them together in a collage, creating a single picture using up to five projectors. In La Guardia you can clearly see the multiple layers of slides being projected together, which help create this transparent, fading effect. The layering also creates an illusion of being 3-dimensional. The piece makes you feel as if you could almost reach out and touch it, as Goldring plays with our depth-perception using the overlapping slides. While the piece is not interactive, it is made to seem as if it is.
Below is part of our analysis of the painting:
The faded color palette and yellowish tinge to the projection evoke a sense of nostalgia. The dilapidated shacks and washed-out imagery could be Goldring’s method of bringing the audience into their own memories of childhood. There are two boys at the bottom strip of the piece: one has his hands raised and the other is clutching his chest. They could be playing or fighting — either way their body language seems agitated.
The centerpiece of the picture is the line of pink, drooping fabrics that are hanging out to dry on a line. The fabrics are contrasted by a blue enclosure, which contains the only other color that really pops out amongst the faded browns and blues of the environment around it. The enclosure seems to be a pool, but it is empty and its walls are chipped. This absence of water only adds to the dry, arid atmosphere of the art piece. The pink fabrics are the only items that, because of their transparency and rippling movement, seem refreshing and light in the otherwise drab and washed-out picture. Other pieces of clothing are hung out to dry in the building pictured on the right, but their dark colors melt in with the shadows as to not draw attention away from the featured pink fabrics.
The children and faded palette form a reminiscent, nostalgia-inducing image while the transparent fabrics hung seem ghostly and unreal. Every detail in the artwork evokes a haunting, profound atmosphere, which is summarized by the title: La Guardia.
