Pattie Lee Becker is one of our incredibly talented alumni and we are thrilled to share her deliciously patterned work with you today! Pattie Lee “is an artist and designer whose pattern and color-rich subconscious explorations bridge the worlds of drawing, sculpture, printmaking, surface design and furniture.
After graduating from Rhode Island School of Design, she moved her studio to Brooklyn, NY, where she developed her practice for a decade before relocating to the Rocky Mountains. She holds an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and has been awarded numerous residencies and fellowships.”
A small sampling from Pattie Lee’s “Objects in Place” collection can be seen above, and I highly recommend looking through the collection in its entirety (along with her other amazing collections!) at pattieleebecker.com. The combination of these carefully thought-out geometric shapes, paired with the bright colors and subtle texture of the colored pencils Pattie Lee uses, struck me as being so fresh and energizing–colored pencils are a medium I don’t use often but Pattie Lee’s work has inspired me to spend some time with them this weekend!
About the “Objects in Place” collection Pattie Lee writes,
Objects in Place became a fresh look at creating composition and pattern. It began with an inquiry: can random arrangements of volumes and lines kick-start an investigation into what pattern, flatness, space, and objects may convey. The simple experiment revealed the process for this new series which explores seemingly mundane objects of daily life, often choreographed by compelling snapshots from my personal archived photographs. Primary objects are abstracted into flatness and non-materiality, leaving only shapes which may at best trigger memories as familiar silhouettes. Surroundings with depth are flattened and then abstracted as vibrant explosions of patterned surfaces that possess their own kaleidoscopic depth.
The juxtaposition of objects portrayed as emptiness with surroundings portrayed as surfaces begins a playful visual oscillation as well as a rewriting of the relationship between the two. The series emphasizes shifts of space and materiality where the hollow stillness of monolithic negative spaces and detailed vibrant surfaces are each vying for our attention. Translating this exploration sculpturally, these objects as negative spaces have been crafted as three-dimensional non-objects devoid of specificity, afloat in their patterns as space.
Take a look at the “Objects in Place” gallery on Pattie Lee’s website to discover the various objects that inspired these images, and the photographs she used as reference. Have a wonderful weekend! -Chelsea
