Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

When I went out searching for patterns and textures, I was greatly inspired by the piece shown to us in class called Britta Maj cotton linen fabric.

The first picture I took was of a pillow that caught my attention in the lobby at my apartment complex. The pattern from the pillow might not be as colorful, but it does have a repetitive pattern like Britta Maj’s piece. Just like what it says in the reading, this pattern has a mechanical grid look to it.

Another picture I took was of the couch at my friend’s apartment. The reason why I felt this design was so interesting was because it seemed to be repetitive and somehow not repetitive at the same time. This pattern consists of the isolated forms in the readings like dots and stripes.

The last picture I took was of a chair in Goertzan Hall on campus. This pattern is pretty repetitive and the use of polygons in these patterns reminds me of Britta Maj’s piece. I feel as if every other ring shape on the design is identical. This pattern also reminds me of a picture from the pattern reading with red and blue pills with a caption under it called One Element, Many Patterns. The pattern changes over throughout the piece. The pattern from the reading has the shapes growing and shrinking throughout the image and the pattern from the chair has its shapes constantly being mirrored.

The textures from these three patterns are all similar. They are from furniture and have a thread-like texture to them.

A throw pillow from the lobby at my apartment complex.

A couch inside my friend’s apartment.

A chair inside Goertzen Hall on campus.

Over a series of several days, I did my best to examine the textures and materials surrounding me and take photos of the textures in the moment I first witnessed them. I never had really reflected on how prominent texture was in the materials I use and see in my every day life until I received this assignment, which allowed me to observe these more in depth.

A picture of the embroidered texture of my duvet cover in my bedroom.

I snapped this photo of my duvet cover in my bedroom the other morning when I woke up. Ellen Lupton explains that texture adds detail to an image, providing an overall surface quality, as well as rewarding the eye when viewed up-close. The duvet in its entirety varies in pattern and texture, as it had a woven quilt-esq appearance with the same simple, ivory shade throughout. My favorite texture is the polka-dots, which I focused on in this photo. Observing this texture up-close allows me to appreciate the effort and detail that the designer must have committed to this material.

A close-up of the floral texture in an elephant sculpture in my living room.

This photo focuses on textural design on a small sculpture of an elephant in my living room. One of my roommates lived in Southeast Asia for many years, and bought this handmade sculpture there while traveling. Lupton explains that texture in our environment helps us understand the nature of things. This texture, accompanied by the bright blue and gold color, adds depth to the sculpture and upholds its level of personal craftsmanship. Without this intricate design on the sculpture, the item completely loses detail and what makes it most unique.

A photo I took of the placemat on my kitchen table.

I have four of these placemats on my kitchen table. They add minor detail to our home and make for more of a warm environment. Lupton states that texture is the literal surface on a printed piece, as well as the optical appearance. Nonetheless, the blue, almost metallic color on the placemat allows the woven detail of the texture to really stand out – especially when light from the light fixture above our table reflects upon it. Dimension and continuity of this texture really catches the eye. For something that is likely mass-produced, the placemat is very intricate.

This is a picture I took of my window shades.

As you have probably noticed by these images, I am not a world renowned photographer. I attempted to find textures that I see every day that where choices made by the people who designed my apartment, and one made by a clothing designer. I never really thought about these as a texture until this class had me looking deeper into things and trying to notice what I see around me. I attempted to find some different things but my ideas of texture and patterning don’t really take me to seeing something as mundane as window shades as a pattern or texture. I was about to leave my apartment one day and noticed the light was shining through the shades and creating this really cool visual of a kind of glow coming in lines through the shades. This was the first image I decided to use since it is the most (in my eyes) different sort of perspective on pattern and texture that I found for this project.

This is an image of my kitchen floor

I was able to find one more kind of different image of pattern that I never really pay attention to on any other give day. I was looking at the linoleum on my kitchen floor and thought it was a cool example for this project. Since linoleum is essentially a plastic based fabric it has an image on it to give it a cool end look so its not just a boring single color. It is designed to look like tiles, but in each square there is a marbled sort of texture giving it more depth. I thought it was an interesting way to view patterns and textures since we will kind of be dealing with something pretty close to that in this class.

This is a picture of one of my purses.

The final texture/pattern I decided to use was my purse which is a sort of alligator scale sort of pattern, however it is black and extremely shiny. I felt like it was interesting to look at since there is sort of a gleam that reflects off of it and a sort of multiple pattern taking place in the material itself.

CUB brick wall

CUB tall grass

Everyday, I walk by these two things as I enter the CUB. I don’t find them too interesting in the context of what we’ll be doing for our first assignment, but I see potential for pattern within the tall grass and describing texture on the wall. When you take a look at the image of the wall in better quality, you’ll see a lot of flaws on the surface. There are multiple indents, aged stains, and tons of various discoloration. All that and they’re separated by another pattern of rows with different sizes of bricks.

As for the image of the tall grass, the leaves and stems act as linear elements that could form into some sort of grid with all of the interactions and crossovers going on within the photo. Rearranging the elements, changing its color, scaling them to different sizes, and perhaps even placing them in a more uniformed matter could create an entirely new piece/pattern.