This week I was struggling a little to find my inspiration for my creative practice. As the semester was coming to a crunch I found that I was taking less and less time to look around and notice the things that caught my eye. When I was walking I was thinking about the next thing I had to do- What assignment is next? What readings do I need to finish? What time do I work? Did I eat lunch? These questions combined with the bit of stress I was experiencing really turned my thought process internal. It wasn’t until we took a little staycation at a hotel in town that I had a chance to let my mind relax and finally found something that caught my eye. As the elevator doors were closing I noticed the stairs in the hotel lobby. At first I wasn’t sure what it was that caught my but I came back down with my camera and started to explore a little more.
This is the first image that caught my eye as I looked back from the elevator.
As I started to look I realized that it was maybe the lines and intersecting angles of the design that caught my eye. There was a nice balance of the weight of the stairs, the wall and the railings and they all intersected in really interesting ways. It kind of reminded me of the hallway image from the blog I posted the first week of the semester. 
The next thing I did was try and think of a different perspective or way to view this stair way. As I got closer I realized that there was a new perspective built in to the subject of stairs itself… I walked up them. Once I got to the top of the stairs I found a new way to see lines in the same subject. I love looking down from the top of an open stair case. It is a beautiful repetition of line and forms.
Finally I walked back down the stairs. I tried taking a photo from the bottom up but it wasn’t as interesting. I think that I disliked it because the lines of the railings and the glass was gone and the pattern of the carpet wasn’t visible. All in all it wasn’t nearly as exciting. So I went back to my original spot and thought about what it was that caught my eye again.
I tried a few more angles and still wasn’t really happy with my images. This one turned out to be kind of interesting but it didn’t really capture what it was that I was experiencing with the railing.
Finally I realized that I was drawn to something that still used lines but it wasn’t the line that caught my eye. I was really drawn to the light on the wall and the way it played with the texture and line of the wall paper.
The other thing I realized about my images this week is that there are starting to be repetitions of elements. I have lines that appear in my first blog that resemble the lines I see in the stair case and the light in this week post definitely fits in with my post about light & shadow. Its definitely interesting to look back at the images week by week and start to assess what my personal aesthetic might be about.
Will Whitten 