Sefwick
God's Eye
Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop, size 20″x15″ (2018)
This artwork is an abstract representation of a God’s Eye. The God’s Eye is an all-seeing eye that knows where people are located and what they are going at all times. The art is a mosaic comprised of only geometric shapes arranged together to form the God’s Eye pattern. At the center of the piece is a camera aperture representing the iris of the eye. The center octagon is black empty space like the pupil of an eye. The camera aperture is a surveillance camera that watches what people do. Surrounding the center eye are banding strips that mimic the woven treads of a traditional God’s Eye folk art. Around the outside edge are a repeating pattern of parallelograms. At each of the four corners is a pyramid. The reason for the pyramids is because they represent the all-seeing eye such as the one found on the Illuminati pyramid, and because they look like rooftops as seen from above. Throughout the art there are pieces separated from the rest of the mosaic. These pieces are made to look like glass shards. They are above and overlapping the rest of the mosaic. The glass shards represent transparency, or lack there of shown by governments when it comes to security and how much they reveal they know about people’s information.
This artwork was first rendered with vector paths and grey scale color fills in Adobe Illustrator. Several large rectangles were drawn from a center point. Then diagonal lines were drawn to bisect those 90-degree angles creating 45-degree angles. Those 45-degree angles to create parallelograms. As the pieces were divided they got smaller in size. Some of the areas were colored with varying degrees of grey scale fills. Some of the pieces were selected to have transparent opacity to make glass shards. Then the whole artwork was imported into Adobe Photoshop where color was overlaid over the grey scale pieces. Areas of highlights and shadows were added to create depth and make it appear the pieces overlap each other. Layers of texture were added to each of the separate pieces to give a rough texture to the flat vector shapes that otherwise looked to sterile. Glowing effects were added to the glass shards and camera lens to create light reflections. In some dark areas red lines were added to create contrast between the red glowing lines on the dark background and green glass.
The color palette for this artwork was inspired by the Verdigris oxidation of copper metal. Colors such as dark copper orange and light cyan green and bright red accents are used because these colors work well together to create a complimentary color palette. The composition of the overall artwork is static, but the diagonally angled glass pieces create a dynamic composition creating energy and movement that runs through the overall piece. The whole artwork is symmetrically and radially balanced with the camera lens as the main central focal point. This creates a feeling of calmness and stability in the viewer. The whole piece is rendered entirely out of geometric shapes the idea is to take something that is traditionally made by woven yarn by hand and expressing it abstractly with vector shapes creates a modern take on old folk art. The geometric shapes that make up the mosaic look like fields of land as viewed from a satellite in space, giving another meaning to this artwork.
This artwork was inspired by the Mexican folk art of creating a God’s Eye (in Spanish, Ojos de Dios). The God’s Eye is a spiritual and votive object made by using two sticks to form a cross then weaving a design out of yarn around the sticks. The God’s Eye symbolizes the power to see and understand things unknown to the physical eye. They also represent the all-seeing eye of God and his omnipresence in our world. Another inspiration for this art is the God’s Eye surveillance system that uses multiple camera enabled devices to monitor and track people over a large distance. Another inspiration for this piece is the Chinese bi (Pi) disk. They are round disks made usually out of jade by people hundreds of year ago. The bi represents heaven and the relationship between the center of a circle and its circumference.
God's Eye
Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop, size 20″x15″ (2018)
This artwork is an abstract representation of a God’s Eye. The God’s Eye is an all-seeing eye that knows where people are located and what they are going at all times. The art is a mosaic comprised of only geometric shapes arranged together to form the God’s Eye pattern. At the center of the piece is a camera aperture representing the iris of the eye. The center octagon is black empty space like the pupil of an eye. The camera aperture is a surveillance camera that watches what people do. Surrounding the center eye are banding strips that mimic the woven treads of a traditional God’s Eye folk art. Around the outside edge are a repeating pattern of parallelograms. At each of the four corners is a pyramid. The reason for the pyramids is because they represent the all-seeing eye such as the one found on the Illuminati pyramid, and because they look like rooftops as seen from above. Throughout the art there are pieces separated from the rest of the mosaic. These pieces are made to look like glass shards. They are above and overlapping the rest of the mosaic. The glass shards represent transparency, or lack there of shown by governments when it comes to security and how much they reveal they know about people’s information.
This artwork was first rendered with vector paths and grey scale color fills in Adobe Illustrator. Several large rectangles were drawn from a center point. Then diagonal lines were drawn to bisect those 90-degree angles creating 45-degree angles. Those 45-degree angles to create parallelograms. As the pieces were divided they got smaller in size. Some of the areas were colored with varying degrees of grey scale fills. Some of the pieces were selected to have transparent opacity to make glass shards. Then the whole artwork was imported into Adobe Photoshop where color was overlaid over the grey scale pieces. Areas of highlights and shadows were added to create depth and make it appear the pieces overlap each other. Layers of texture were added to each of the separate pieces to give a rough texture to the flat vector shapes that otherwise looked to sterile. Glowing effects were added to the glass shards and camera lens to create light reflections. In some dark areas red lines were added to create contrast between the red glowing lines on the dark background and green glass.
The color palette for this artwork was inspired by the Verdigris oxidation of copper metal. Colors such as dark copper orange and light cyan green and bright red accents are used because these colors work well together to create a complimentary color palette. The composition of the overall artwork is static, but the diagonally angled glass pieces create a dynamic composition creating energy and movement that runs through the overall piece. The whole artwork is symmetrically and radially balanced with the camera lens as the main central focal point. This creates a feeling of calmness and stability in the viewer. The whole piece is rendered entirely out of geometric shapes the idea is to take something that is traditionally made by woven yarn by hand and expressing it abstractly with vector shapes creates a modern take on old folk art. The geometric shapes that make up the mosaic look like fields of land as viewed from a satellite in space, giving another meaning to this artwork.
This artwork was inspired by the Mexican folk art of creating a God’s Eye (in Spanish, Ojos de Dios). The God’s Eye is a spiritual and votive object made by using two sticks to form a cross then weaving a design out of yarn around the sticks. The God’s Eye symbolizes the power to see and understand things unknown to the physical eye. They also represent the all-seeing eye of God and his omnipresence in our world. Another inspiration for this art is the God’s Eye surveillance system that uses multiple camera enabled devices to monitor and track people over a large distance. Another inspiration for this piece is the Chinese bi (Pi) disk. They are round disks made usually out of jade by people hundreds of year ago. The bi represents heaven and the relationship between the center of a circle and its circumference.