Painting Gateway
Recent grad Sarah Weinstock creates art for a South Campus business
As an artist, Sarah Weinstock is interested in more than just painting techniques.
Weinstock--who received her master's in painting at Ohio State summer commencement and will teach beginning drawing at The Ohio State University at Marion this fall--also wanted to understand the science behind the objects that she was painting. She became particularly fascinated with fractals (complex geometric figures that occur in nature) and the infrastructure and growth patterns of food.
So when Sunflower Market, a natural foods grocery, started looking for an artist to create murals for its store in Ohio State's South Campus Gateway, the chairman of the art department, Sergio Soave, suggested Weinstock.
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| "The painting of green cabbage was done with washy paint and applied with sponges." |
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| "The brocciflower painting, after being lightened up. Fractals taste great!" |
The result is nine 4-foot by 8-foot murals that will be encased in glass in the windows of the store, on the corner of Ninth Avenue and High Street. They look more like a public art installation than traditional advertising.
Weinstock's work started with a trip to the grocery store, where she filled her cart with $100 worth of interesting-looking veggies: kale, artichokes, several varieties of cabbage, and brocciflower, a genetically-modified crossbreed of broccoli and cauliflower. She brought the veggies home, photographed close-ups, then used her computer to intensify some of the colors.
She's spent most of her evenings this summer with several other Ohio State art students. After dark, they've put Weinstock's enhanced photos into a projector, shone them onto birch panels painted white, and traced the outlines with colored pencils. The group has painted over the outlines, creating vivid murals of a sunflower, pomegranate, cabbages, melons, mushrooms, and a brocciflower.
"Patterns reveal what is happening below the surface, and I am interested in different ways things can move given their restrictions or boundaries," Weinstock says, of her interest in fractals. "What can we learn by looking at all the different possibilities? How can we move?"
(text: University Marketing Communications; images: Sarah Weinstock)
Related information:
South Campus Gateway at Ohio State
Bellachroma.com: the art of Sarah Weinstock (off-site)
On Ninth Avenue : Weinstock's paintings of these images
