page_title: Sam Gilliam
section_title: Selected artwork
hierarchical_section_title: Sam Gilliam / Selected artwork
caption_attribution_description: English: picture of Jamaica Center Station Riders, Blue
context_page_description: Sam Gilliam is an African-American color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist. Gilliam is associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C. area artists that developed a form of abstract art from color field painting in the 1950s and 1960s. His works have also been described as belonging to abstract expressionism and lyrical abstraction. He works on stretched, draped and wrapped canvas, and adds sculptural 3D elements. He is recognized as the first artist to introduce the idea of a draped, painted canvas hanging without stretcher bars around 1965. This was a major contribution to the Color Field School.
  In his more recent work, Gilliam has worked with polypropylene, computer-generated imaging, metallic and iridescent acrylics, handmade paper, aluminum, steel, plywood, and plastic.
context_section_description: Solar Canopy, 1986 
  An aluminum sculpture made by color field artist Sam Gilliam in 1986. It is a large 34'x 12'x 6" feet painted sculpture located at York College, City University of New York's Academic Core Lounge on the third floor across a huge open window. It is suspended from the ceiling at 60 ft (18 m) high. The artwork is made up of painted geometric shapes with many vibrant colors, some having a solid color while others have a tie-dye effect painted on them. The artwork is connected together in a horizontal diagonal with a circular shape in the middle. The circular middle is red on the outside and underneath is painted with many different colors in a tie-dye effect. It also has small blocks under it painted in solid colors of red, orange, blue and yellow. Attached to some of the small blocks are triangular blocks.
  Jamaica Center Station Riders, Blue, 1991
  Located at the Jamaica Center train station (E,J,Z) is a large aluminum sculpture mounted high outside on a wall above one of the entrances. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit project commissioned the work in 1991. It is made up of geometric shapes painted in solid primary colors (red, yellow, blue). The shape of the overall sculpture is circular, with the outer part being blue while the inner parts are red and yellow. In the artist's words, the work "calls to mind movement, circuits, speed, technology, and passenger ships...the colors used in the piece... refer to colors of the respective subway lines. The predominant use of blue provides one with a visual solid in a transitional area that is near subterranean."
caption: Picture of Jamaica Center Station Riders, Blue
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