"Game System"

In my research of the artist that inspired this project, I found that I was immediately attracted to the series that involved stars. Each image in the set that Sol Lewitt created involved the addition of one more point to the star shape, increasing the intricacy as the series and system moved along. However, his other works that had a feeling of three-dimensionality also intrigued me. I wanted to figure out a way to create a system that combined the feeling that something was 3D using triangles, allowing me to limit the use of the actual squares on the graph paper; I knew from the start that I didn’t want to use them as features in my system.

The idea I had involved looking at my system as if it were a game involving the placement of triangular “game pieces” into a ring. On each “board,” one more piece needed to be placed into the ring than on the previous “board.” The catch was that you could only place the game piece underneath those that had already been placed into the ring. For example, on board number three, the third triangle must be placed under both triangles one and two.

To create the “boards,” a circle was drawn on graph paper using a compass. Each circle was between seven (for the smaller number of triangles used) and nine squares wide at the most clear diagonal (for the boards that would require more triangle space). In order to make sure that the triangular game pieces were the same size, the compass was used again—set to a certain width, marks were made on the page to indicate the length of the base of the rectangle. A ruler was used to keep the sides of each triangle straight when being drawn in. The coloring happened last, and was done in a more arbitrary fashion so as to allow the overlapping and layers I created to be better seen.

The lack of rigidity when it comes to structuring can make it seem as if the system I’ve created is weak. However, my project is a system in the sense that you are systematic in your approach and handlings of what you, in repeating it, are trying to accomplish.

(I'd add images, but Bill has all of my pages!)