#Camp kaleidoscope austin circle series#

One can walk around and behind the rods and look through them to see how objects on the other side are bent and manipulated by the material, like objects in a funhouse mirror.Īs a mimesis of memory, Chromourban functions well. Light bounces over and through the Plexiglas and paint lending the piece a fetching brilliance that is sensuous and satisfying. The installation is immediately compelling.

#Camp kaleidoscope austin circle series#

Morales seems to have sensed this, which may have led to her more adventurous piece, Chromourban, a series of painted Plexiglas rods that hang in a line, and at different heights, from the ceiling. It is accessible, which is fine, but the vertical lines and circles are precise in a way a memory, having begun to dissipate, probably can't be. That said, the image is still predictable in some ways. Her colors are vibrant, her swirling clouds like something out of Yellow Submarine, psychedelic and unsettling, the way a memory may be when it is just out of reach. Morales' dismantled surface, combined with her drawing style – like a graphic novelist's expressive line – do offer a somewhat hallucinatory experience.

These alterations make Urban Kaleidoscope: The City into a distorted version of Austin, one that, according to the artist, reflects the piecemeal nature of memory. She has also cut the Plexiglas so that multiple circles of various sizes appear over the scene, confusing the forms that would otherwise be more distinctive. I can be further forgiven for my failure to immediately recognize my hometown because Morales has sliced the image into intermittent vertical strips. I only began to suspect I was looking at Austin when I noted the familiar pyramidal shape of 100 Congress. All of the details – trees, buildings, clouds – are drawn in black outlines, so that you can see through the buildings to the orange-yellow sky behind them. The colors begin at the bottom with the blue of the lake, then slowly transform skyward into the luminous yellows and oranges of a sunset. This is due to Morales' trippy aesthetic. I was born and raised in Austin, so the image should have been instantly recognizable, but I had to have it confirmed that the picture did, in fact, represent Austin. It is a view of the Austin skyline from the south side of Lady Bird Lake. Urban Kaleidoscope: The City, by Lorena Morales, is a bright paint and ink illustration on Plexiglas. Urban Kaleidoscope: The City by Lorena Morales