The Big Break
One-dimensional art you can… go in?
“The Big Break,” a piece by artist Blakeney Sanford, adorns the side of a three story parking structure at EQ Office’s Playa District. Various shades of blue cascade down the huge wall, creating a perfect photo-op for visitors and peaceful atmosphere for workers at the office.
Sanford specializes in 3-D and sculpture artwork, deriving inspiration from water and the ocean, elements that personally soothe her and remind her of tandem surfing with her husband.
When EQ Office’s Playa District desired a mural for their parking structure, we approached them with an image of one of Sanford’s 3-D pieces. They LOVED it. The problem? How would we turn a 3-D piece into a 37’x37’ 2D mural?
At CB Creative Agency we specialize in overseeing huge art installations like this one. Each project is unique and requires a slightly different approach. This was the general process we followed for this piece:
1. Brainstorm
This is how we begin to tackle any big task. For the Playa District mural, we sat down with our vendor, Erik at Spin Imaging, to figure out how we were going to take a 3-D art piece and turn it into a 2D, 37’ x 37’ vinyl graphic mural.
Were we going to take pictures of individual panels and piece them together digitally? Were we going to take zoomed-in pictures of the panel texture and make a cool graphic with it? We didn’t know.
Blakeney provided us with some of her hand-poured resin panels, which helped our in-house brainstorming.
2. Photograph the sculpture
Once landing on a plan of action, the team got to work. Meeting at the crossroads of creativity, skill, and technicality, Blakeney and the experts at Spin Imaging took to the studio to photograph one of the artist’s complete sculptures, translating her dimensional piece into a digital image. While most large scale billboards of today appear crisp and clear from a distance, they are generally quiet pixelated if viewed close up. We were determined to make this installation an immersive experience, even at ground level, so pixelation was out of the question.
Utilizing approximately eight, 100-megapixel, medium format images stitched together, we were able to capture the dimensionality and detail present in Blakeney’s original sculpture--even when viewed mere inches from the wall! Our studio lighting was created to mimic a real world sunset beautifully casting across the back of a wave, which furthered our ability to translate the artist’s original vision and bring out the unique textures and colors in her blue resin panels. The results were pretty remarkable!
3. Print & install!
After rounds of sample printing and dialing in graphic details, the image was printed and produced at a resolution so high some might even call it ‘hyper-real’. Not only was producing a pristine image important to us, promoting the longevity of our exterior mural was another huge part of this project. UV protection was paramount due to the location of the structure (near the Playa Del Rey beach).
To combat weather damage and sun fading, we used true solvent inks, premium (long-term) base and over-laminate materials, as well as 3M certified installation techniques. Armed with the talent and finesse of our incredible installation team, we got to work on the parking structure on a Saturday morning - by sunset, “The Big Break” had come to life!
Regarding the “Big Break” piece, Sanford remarked, “There is so much information to take in, and I hope people stop and try to figure out really what’s going on. It has so much beautiful movement in it. I can’t wait to see people in it!”
Of course, you can’t literally walk IN this piece, as it’s 2-D, but it creates a fun allusion of a 3-D wave. But when your friends walk in front of it, it really feels like they’re in the wave!
Check out more of Sanford’s work at http://www.blakeneysanford.com/
