Working with Shapes and Patterns

Serialism in Visual Art

Serialism is an art movement where objects are assembled in an order. The composition of serial art is a systematic process. An early example of serialism is  Constantin Brancusi's sculpture Endless Column.

During these lessons in art we talked about serialism and what is the concept of serielism art. For our final project in art we had to create an artwork which included a pattern and reflected the idea of serielism. Firstly I had to divide an A2 size piece of white paper in 9 squares (3x3) then I was given the task to choose any 2D shape and choose 1-2 colors. The assignment was to cut out the chosen shape from the chosen colored paper, you could cut them out in different sizes but always keeping the same shape. I chose the square because I think it's the easiest shape to make and there are hundreds of possible patterns I could come up with. We spent the first and second lesson cutting out shapes since I needed quite a lot. I cut out three different sizes of squares, the biggest one measuring 6cm by 6cm, the second one measuring 4cm by 4cm and the smallest one measuring 2cm by 2cm. The two chosen colours were purple and yellow as they nicely matched together and would look appealing to the eye on the A2 poster.

Here are the shapes I used to make my pattern

When I started cutting out the shapes for my pattern, I already had an idea in mind of what pattern I wanted to create and how it would look like. However when I had all my shapes cut out, I realised that I needed to develop my pattern more and make it more complex but still keeping an order on the paper. I wanted a clean pattern with shapes of sharp edges so my paper wouldn't look messy but instead would look almost sophisticated. This is how my pattern looked like after two lessons. Even though it wasn't finished I had a clear idea of how my final plan was going to look like.

In the fourth lesson, Ms told us that we had to create an idea behind your artwork. Why are you creating this? What does this mean to you? Why did you choose the colours and the shape/s? I started thinking about this but I found it quite hard and I kept thinking that my artwork was missing something; that is was incomplete. I wanted to add another shape but didn't want another colour because then the artwork would be too chaotic. I decided to add a circle but instead of using purple and yellow, I decided to use newspaper as the 'colour'. At this point I still hadn't figured out why I was using the newspaper or why I chose circles and squares, I just liked how it looked visually.