Chromatic Patterns for the Graham Foundation is a 2014 site-specific, immersive installation by Chicago-based artist Judy Ledgerwood, created for the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in Chicago. The installation transformed the first-floor galleries of the Foundation’s historic Madlener House into a floor-to-ceiling field of vibrant fluorescent color and metallic pattern, dramatically altering the experience of the architectural space.

Following the exhibition, Ledgerwood produced Chromatic Patterns After the Graham Foundation, a trio of lithographic and relief prints that echo the colors and motifs of the original installation. Rendered in fluorescent red, orange, and pink, and enhanced with the sparkle of metallic silver, the prints serve as a permanent record of the otherwise ephemeral work. Published by Manneken Press in 2014, the prints were issued in editions of 20 and are signed, titled, and numbered in pencil on the verso.

Ledgerwood's inspiration was Morton Feldman's 1981 composition for cello and piano "Patterns In A Chromatic Field" which employs tightly repeated motifs that are almost, but not quite, identical- a sloppy canon in which the slop assumes an erratic structure of its own. Ledgerwood took the metaphorical Chromatic Field of Feldman's title and made it literal; the breaks in Feldman's composition became doorways from one room to another; time- the distance between one part of the composition and another- was replaced with space, at least for the two months that the exhibition lasted.

Susan TallmanArt In Print, March-April 2015, Volume 4, No. 6

A separate deluxe edition was also produced for a portfolio:  “Chromatic Patterns After the Graham Foundation” portfolio includes all three of  Ledgerwood’s prints and a poem by John Yau, housed in a beautiful custom portfolio case designed by Jason Pickleman. The deluxe portfolio is limited to eight sets.

Back to all Judy Ledgerwood's Prints