@Ralston Central Park
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@mindybray
@landmarkexhbi
t#artstrongarvada
For more information, please visit mindybray.com
My work explores the intersection of natural and built environments. I am interested in the landscapes that occur in daily, urban life: the parks, yards, urban waterways, and trails that we encounter every day. I'm especially interested in how built environments frame or shape the landscape, either through simply changing our perspective on it, or physically changing the landscape through processes like river management or landscaping.
I work in painting and drawing, both in the studio on paper and canvas, and in site-specific murals, which are often at a large scale. The murals on the wall are site conditioned and respond directly to an architectural space. Executed directly on the wall in latex paint, I find parallels between the use of an architectural space and a natural pattern of movement. Abstracted shapes of light reflecting on a nearby river may mirror the directional flow of foot traffic through a building and up an escalator, or the shadow of a tree cast through a window may multiply and reflect within a corner. These pieces blur the boundaries between interior and exterior space, creating illusions of light and shape that move between the physical borders of a building.
This piece, Meander, for the LandMark exhibition in Arvada, is painted directly on the concrete at Ralston Central Park, engaging with the everyday experience of those using the Ralston Creek trail. The pattern in this piece is based on the atomic structure of gold, referencing Arvada’s history in which Lewis Ralston discovered gold at the confluence of Ralston Creek and Clear Creek. The placement of the pattern at the intersection of the parks’ paths mirrors the confluence of the creeks. Just as viewers change their direction on the paths, the creek itself has changed its path over time due to human impact, either through gold or uranium mining or through urban development.
For this piece, I branched out in terms of process, using a cut stencil for the atomic pattern, and spray paint for the application. The colors are fun and playful and will hopefully inspire some people – including kids - to play hopscotch or to jump from one circle to the next. My hope is that this piece will be interactive, and that it will both brighten the day for those out in the park and inspire reflection on our relationship to our urban waterways, both our environmental impact on them, and the ways in which they enhance our quality of life and everyday experience.
