Sarah Stengle and Genevieve Gaiser Tremblay

Statement

The Criterion of Yielding is collaboration with artist Genevieve Gaiser Tremblay in which diagrams of stress, strain and yielding are superimposed onto nineteenth century stereoscopic images. We are sharing a visual vocabulary that includes diagrams from The Mathematics of Plasticity by Rodney Hill and a group of glass stereoscopic images from the 1850’s. The concepts of stress and strain are interesting mathematically, visually and metaphorically. In addition to a group of forty finished drawings, we plan to produce a short virtual reality animation that will occur within three-dimensional space modeled from an old stereoscopic image, combined with elements taken from our drawings.

Artworks

This drawing uses a visual “net” adapted from diagrams of metal deformation to connect two isolated figures standing in semi-darkness in a frozen landscape. The gemstone peridot is used for its bright green pigment. Mixed with gum arabic and dark coffee, the peridot creates a glow at the points of intersection and within the spattered stains of the foreground. I intended to evoke the feeling of singing or music in the winter sky and the idea of an invisible connection between people. The stereoscopic image is from the New York Public Library Digital Archive, and the line drawing was inspired by diagrams appearing in Rodney Hill's book the Mathematics of Plasticity, published in 1950.