Seeking to merge photographic material with new-age (at the time) techniques, I explored creating a series of digital kaleidoscopes… visual mandalas. The original mandalas were created pain-stakingly in Photoshop, requiring me to crop, flip, duplicate, and rotate a single part of an image over, until a final image was constructed. Later we developed a flexible solution in After Effects, allowing us to quickly iterate on options, and even blend multiple images together and animate them for some videos.
Mandala Designs
Created from images of flowers, grasses, water, and frost, these mandalas allowed for infinite exploration of shapes, colors, and textures. The images were quite dynamic.
Mandalas – Prints
Originally, the Mandala series were printed as a gyclee, which were mounted and framed. The images were beautiful and textured. Printing caused images to be subtle in color.
Mandalas – LightBoxes
Duratrans lightboxes were used for the Mandalas, allowing for the colors to be vivid, and the designs to standout along the walls. These versions helped viewers emerse themselves into the designs.
Mandalas – Silks
For a show, some Mandalas were printed on silk, and hung along the ceiling. The effect was quite beautiful, and added the dimension of movement to the designs.
