Gradient (Maple Tree), 2015

In July 2015, the Brandywine River Museum of Art commissioned James Welling to create a site-specific installation exploring the intersection of art and the environment. He photographed several locations around the museum grounds, and one of those photographs became the basis for this color-driven sculpture. Working digitally, he sampled colors from the photograph and arranged them through gradient mapping, creating a seamless gradation representing parts of the chromatic spectrum captured from the original landscape image. The gradient map was then printed by fusing inks directly onto a metal plate and placed at the exact location where he took the original photograph. By blurring the boundaries between photography and sculpture, the work invites closer examination of the changing colors of the Brandywine landscape throughout the year.

Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania · United States