Week 4: Texture

Given the theme of texture, I started thinking about how light can be “textured”, as in the amount of light hitting something is broken up (ie, from a gobo). But then I realized that as light hits an object that itself has a three-dimensional texture, it will hit the different parts of that differently. I tried to keep that duality of texture in my mind as I walked around this week, and the other day I saw something that perfectly fit that double theme. In the little hallway stair area, leading from the arts courtyard toward my office, I glanced over and saw how the light was streaming through the trees, creating this leaf breakup pattern on the bumpy stucco wall. I was struck by how the various parts of the leaf shadows were all different shades. Of course, some leaves are thicker, or perhaps the sunlight angle was going more directly through depending on the orientation of the leaf. But even more than a pattern, I felt that you could really see how the different leaves all had different qualities and dimensionality. And then looking at the uneven surface of the wall, each of the bumps having a different shape and height made for all different of their own shadows and different ways they are taking in the light. Light really does sculpt objects, as we talk about in class, and looking for this kind of scene made me start thinking about that in a much more intentional way.