The AlbrightKnox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, inaugurated an ArtistinResidence program in June

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The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New
York, inaugurated an Artist-in-Residence program
in June 2008 by bringing internationally known
artist Ingrid Calame to Buffalo for three weeks.
Calame launched this community-based initiative
by gathering images from in and around the city,
then returning to her Los Angeles studio and
working from these images. Ingrid Calame is
known for her artworks based on tracings of
stains and marks found on city streets and
sidewalks that she transposes onto museum walls.
For other projects, Calame and teams of tracers
have traced from sites that range from the
sidewalks outside the New York State Stock
Exchange to the auto racetracks at the
Indianapolis Speedway. This slide show
highlights Calames Buffalo tracing sites and
serves as an introduction for this exciting
project. For more information about Ingrid
Calame, her work, and this residency, please
visit  http//www.albrightknox.org/education/AI
R/index.html
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The Buffalo Project
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Ingrid Calame (kuh LAHM) learned about Buffalos
history when the Albright-Knox Art Gallery
invited her to create a project here. She was
fascinated by Buffalos industrial history,
especially its industrial buildings and grain
elevators, like these in South Buffalo.
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While driving through Buffalo on the first day of
her residency in June 2008, Ingrid spotted this
large blue shape at South Park and Louisiana
Streets in South Buffalo. It turned out to be
an unused wading pool.
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The pool was full of beautiful blue paint marks
and scrapes, alternating with the bare cement of
the pool bottom. Ingrid instructed her tracing
team of 15 local artists and students on how to
execute their pencil drawings on rolls of
transparent Mylar so their work would be useful
back in her studio.
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Heres an even better view of the beautiful marks
on the pool bottom. The wooden circles hold the
Mylar down when the wind blows, and the black
pads protect both the drawing and the tracers
knees. Tracers worked eight hours a day for over
two weeks!
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You can see the drawing the team is creating more
clearly in this image. Youll see the finished
drawing next.
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This is a close-up of the finished drawing from
the bottom of the empty wading pool.
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Ingrid was also intrigued by the tar marks used
to repair the parking lot at the Albright-Knox
Art Gallery in Buffalo, which to her looked like
a giant abstract drawing. Here she is
formulating a plan to execute a very large
tracing with her team.
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Here, members of the tracing team trace the marks
from the parking lot, clearly visible in the
background, on a roll of Mylar.
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The third Buffalo site was inside a
steel-finishing mill, ArcelorMittal, Inc., in
Lackawanna, New York. Because the facility was
operational during the project, the team was
required to wear hard hats, steel-toed boots, and
safety goggles. They are tracing numbers
stenciled on the floor in the steel storage area.
Notice the large coils of steel in the
background, ready to be shipped to ArcelorMittal
customers.
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The coils of sheets of steel in the background
weigh ten to twelve tons each! They are ready to
be shipped to ArcelorMittal, Inc. customers
across the country to build cards and other
metal products. The tracers came to the Steel
mill for a total of five eight to ten hour days.
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Although we did not know this in June 2008, this
factory was to close in April 2009. The drawings
are now a part of history.
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Heres a close-up of numbers being traced at the
steel mill.
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The last site was inside the grain elevators at
Riverwright, Inc. These were the buildings you
saw in the very first slide
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At Riverwright, Ingrid traced numbers on the
machinery inside one of these grain elevators.
This was new for her she usually traces marks
on the ground. After all the drawings were
finished, two days were spent rolling them up and
packing them to be shipped to Los Angeles,
California 22 rolls in all.
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Back home in her Los Angeles studio, Ingrid laid
out tracings from the Buffalo Artist-in-Residence
project. On the wall you can see colored pencil
drawings she made from the original pencil
tracings.
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She constructed a cardboard model of the room in
the Albright-Knox Art Gallery where a wall
painting will be installed. A wall painting is
painted directly on the Gallery wall, and painted
over after it is exhibited. The plans to the
painting exist on paper so that it can be
painted again the next time its exhibited.
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Ingrid uses small photos of her very large
drawings to plan how her final work will look at
the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Here the strip of
photos is laid out next to a tracing from the
numbers on the floor of the steel mill.
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She uses the scale models she constructs of the
gallery at the Albright-Knox to envision how her
exhibition will look when it opens in September
of 2009. Inside the scale model are plans for a
wall painting based on the drawings made at the
steel mill.
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Here is a close-up of one of the colored pencil
drawings Ingrid made back in her studio by
layering the drawings that were made in Buffalo.
The marks she utilized in this drawing came from
Gallerys parking lot.
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Ingrid also made paintings from the drawings.
Here is one of the painting tables at her studio
in Los Angeles, California.
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Here is a painting made from the Buffalo tracings.
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She chooses her colors very carefully, and mixes
them herself. These are the painting charts she
makes to plan her color combinations, pinned on
the wall of her studio.
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Like many artists, Ingrid is very precise about
the colors she chooses for paintings. To get
the specific colors she chooses from her color
charts, she mixes large batches of a color and
loads it into special pre-made tubes with an open
bottom. You can see the cap on the end facing
down.
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Heres a tube of paint all finished, with the end
rolled up like a tube of toothpaste. Ingrid has
put the color and a number on the outside for
identification.
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Here she is painting one of the paintings from
the Buffalo project. Notice the colors shes
using are the same ones on her color chart.
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This is the painting she was just working on.
Its not finished yet.
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Ingrid paints one of the works from the Buffalo
project. Notice the colored pencil drawing to
her left, which she made by layering tracings
done at different Buffalo sites
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In 2008, students from three local classes
learned about Ingrid Calames process in a
series of workshops. Here second-grade students
in Rick Zotaras art class at Windermere
Boulevard Elementary School work on their
tracings and paintings. Lesson plans based on
these workshops are on view at www.albrightknox.or
g.
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Elmwood Village Charter School First graders
making ketchup and mustard stains.
Windermere Elementary School second graders
creating muddy footprint stains.
Students made their own marks and stains to
trace. Some stains were made with food items
like catsup and mustard. Others were from muddy
boots. Others were painted.
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Ingrid made time to talk to students during the
June 2008 residency. Here she answers questions
from after-school students at The Valley
Community Center after-school program in South
Buffalo.
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The exhibition of work created through the
Buffalo project will be on view in an exhibition
called Step On a Crack . . . at the Albright-Knox
Art Gallery from September 25, 2009 February
28, 2010. The title of the exhibition comes
from what Ingrid Calame was thinking about while
she spent hours tracing and painting. What do
you think was one of the things she was thinking
about?
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Other Projects by Ingrid Calame
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Buffalo is one in a series of many tracing
Projects Ingrid Calame has executed. Here is a
different tracing team tracing stains and other
marks on the sidewalk outside the New York
Stock Exchange in Manhattan in New York City in
October of 2000.
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She laid the tracings from the sidewalk inside
the Stock Exchange itself, along with tracings
made in Los Angeles, California. The
Stock Exchanges Main Room Trading Floor thus
determined the final shape for the painting she
created. Here the tracers are marking the
tracings so Ingrid can lay them all out
exactly as they are here back in her studio.
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Ingrid tracing in the New York Stock Exchange.
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Ingrid back in her Los Angeles studio, working on
the New York Stock Exchange painting, 2003.
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The finished painting, titled Secular Response
2AJ, was painted on clear Mylar that was affixed
to gallery wall. This is the painting as it was
installed at James Cohan Gallery in New York, New
York in 2003. Why do you think she chose green
for this painting?
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Another project was executed in 2006 at the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis,
Indiana.
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What attracted Ingrid Calame here was the
victory donuts tire skid marks made by cars
after their drivers won races and did a
celebratory drive down the track. As you can
see, they come in different shapes!.
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Here is a wall painting from the Indianapolis
project, titled 2005 Indianapolis 500 Victory
Donut Traces of Dan Wheldon, in an exhibition
at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in
2007. Remember a wall painting is just painted
over after the exhibition and the until it
is painted again plans exists only as plans and
instructions on a piece of paper.
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A project in 2005 focused on graffiti on the
concrete, man made banks along the Los Angeles
River Basin. You can see the tracers far in the
distance.
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Here are tracers from this project doing their
thing!
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The final paintings from this project were
designed for a specific site at the Institute of
Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Here they are seen at night through the window
of the building. Notice the tree in front of the
window.
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Heres a view from inside the building. Notice
the walkway between the two paintings. This
design made it possible for the painting to look
as you just saw it from the outside window. The
title is Tracing up to the L.A. River Frog Town
turf war.
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Ingrid continues to work in her studio with help
from Sula, her cat!
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Ingrid keeps all of her tracings from every
projecton file and combines them for other work,
too. This painting , titled From 258 Drawing
combines Indianapolis Motor Speedwaytracings
with Los Angeles River Basin tracings. You can
be sure that in the future Buffalo tracings will
be used in more of Ingrids work!
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Artist Ingrid Calame and her family live is Los
Angeles, California.
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Educators To plan your curriculum to connect to
this exhibition, please visit our Web site,
www.albrightknox.org, for lesson plans for all
grade levels, information about our educator
workshop for this exhibition, and to schedule a
free visit through Artscool.

BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York saw an
opportunity to take the Albright-Knox Art
Gallery, already a leader in visual arts
education, to the next level of instructional
outreach through Art'scool. This partnership
breaks down existing geographic and financial
barriers while enhancing educational
opportunities for children of all ages, allowing
many more students to benefit from this
world-class institution.
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We hope to see you during the next school year at
the Albright-Knox Art Gallery!