Art Gallery Experience

Thomas Kinkade Gallery of Tri Cities

19 N Cascade St. Kennewick, Wa 99336

The artwork that was displayed were paintings, Paintings before 2003 used lithographic transfer, paintings after 2004 used gilcee printing. They were displayed in a gallery that is about 1200 square feet.

To display the art work they used movable walls to mount the paintings, most paintings were mounted on the walls or movable walls but there were also some that were leaning up against the wall. They also had some small tables holding up trinkets that were either for sale or for added decorations. They had a separate room which had a stand that was connected to a dark red wall, this space was meant to allow buyers to place the paintings they were interested in on, and it let the buyers seclude their painting from all the others to view it alone.

Thomas Kinkade was known as the painter of light, his artwork showed this by using many different values of color to bring out the look of light in his paintings.  For this gallery lighting played a huge role in the experience received from the artwork. There were three main types of lighting used in this gallery natural lighting, dimmers, and spotlights. In the three sectioned out rooms dimmer lights and spot lights were mainly used. In the main/middle area part of the gallery natural lighting and spot lights are used. Each sectioned out rooms have a theme, one room is Disney themed and each paintings look changes as the spotlights are brightened and dimmed, this room mostly stays bright to add on to the happy vibrant feel of Disney. The main/middle area has a lot of nature paintings which works well with the natural lighting that is coming in from the large windows in the front of the gallery.

When entering the gallery you are able to see the reception desk on your right and the exhibit starts on the left. By placing movable walls in the middle and cutting off the second half of the exhibit it helps direct visitors through a u shaped path. While going through the u shaped path on the left side are four separate rooms that to go through too, in these room it’s a simple rotation to lead you through the artwork.

The environment of this gallery is very calm colors that are used are deep red, tan, off white, purple, and light green. These colors are used to bring out main points of the paintings. The flooring is a simple wood laminate which is textured; the flooring doesn't take away from the artwork. Before this building was a gallery it was the old Tri City Herald Printing building in 1956, the new owners wanted to keep some aspects of the old printing building. They were able to keep the layout of the building and details like the crown modeling and curved edges. Although some details from the reuse of the building are left it does not take away from the gallery and the artwork it seems to add more character.

Impaired Vision Experience

As a part of the reuse train depot project we conducted an impaired vision experience to understand how it feels to have diminished vision. This was a great way to help experience how life is lived with impaired vision we were able to comprehend what our client goes through daily. For this experience I read the newspaper while holding a bag, this is considered 20/60 vision, I was only able to read the newspaper when it was about six inches away from my face but it was also blurry. I then folded the bag in half which considered legally blind, I was only able to see colors, shapes, outlines, bright lights, and I could make out objects about a foot in front of me. By using the vision simulator tool I experienced the views of a person with central vision loss, loss of parts of visual field, and tunnel vision. While looking through the central vision loss I could notice everything pretty clear expect the middle, loss of parts of visual field made my sight foggy, not whole, and parted, and tunnel vision was very narrow I wasn’t able to see what was on the side of me. The main purpose of this experiment was to do every day activities with impaired vision, my task was to wear simulated glass and walk into the book store on campus use the elevator, ATM machine, and walk up and down the stairs. From these activities using the elevator was the easiest because the elevator does were contrasted to a red wall and they had indications on the buttons. The hardest part was using the ATM because of the lack of indications the buttons were hard to see and I had to get really close to read the directions for the ATM. The stairs that lead to Holland-Terrell Library used contrast on the steps it was not easy going up and down them but they were not too difficult to handle.  With the glasses on many objects looked like big blobs and people looked like moving ovals. I enjoyed this experiment because now I am able to use what I learned to add into my universal design for the train depot.

Concept Development

Concept Model

While visiting a train depot in Pullman Washington I found an old door that had a push panel which became my inspiration for the reuse of the depot. What caught my interest in this object was the line work, a man made metal placed on natural wood, the geometric shapes, the idea of what is behind the door, and the history and age of the door and overall location. These ideas helped develop an object analysis where I was able to expand on these ideas and add in more thoughts i had about the door. By choosing the thoughts and elements of design that I could expand and move on with, it lead me to a Parti design that showed the concept that was being portrayed. After developing a parti design that showed my concept I created a textile by repeating and rotating the parti design, I wanted the textile to keep an aged look so the idea of dollies was incorporated for an appearance of old fashion.The main idea for the concept model was the thought of what is behind closed doors, by adding slits in a box it crafts the impression of a glance inside. Also added was a man made object extruding out of natural wood to stay with the concept of the inspiration object. This project was a great way to help expand my knowledge of concept exploration. I successfully moved the ideas from my inspiration object to a model that represents all the thoughts of my exploration.  My weakness was being too literal and abstracting the object but I then was able to move pass that. I am pleased with the final model and that I was able to move all concepts of the door into a textile and model.