optical illusions

akin to rotations ⚈

Ramblings

Juan A. Franco Ricardo. Screenshot (Purple), 2025. screenshot. [a swirl of the color purple made soft by the texture of the material. it circles towards an falsely, immutable center. the intersecting lines of the yarn create a repeated rhythm of design, leading over and over again. below the crop, five shades of the purple sit almost as squares. an optical illusion occurs where gray circles appear the corners].

in the middle of sipping a bitter red drink, i became the focus of the conversation. more precisely, two out of the four people i had gathered, wanted to discover my color palette. they insisted. from the chartreuse turtleneck, to a series of greens that were too dark or too light, a certain purple emerged. i remember this color family in different occasions earlier in life: a deep v american apparel shirt, including the matching briefs and a beautiful (so beautiful) scarf a childhood friend had made for me. i think i lost that scarf in the back of a car, i was distracted with preparing an exhibition. to be honest, i left some work at that place and sold one work to a scientist turned policy maker. i have yet to read some of the books gifted to me. i think in theory, this royal adjacent purple [this was a screenshot from the evening] in a way, works. there is nothing stopping me. i had not planned for the evening, i had already been out, it was thursday, but when i arrived home. a crew of familiar and new faces greeted me by the stoop. it was an invitation to continue into the evening. after going up and then doing the stairs, a walking and breezy journey, took the group into the back red room of a familiar place. there, i was presented with a style guide and colors to consider.

to describe a color all you need 
is the delicate mix of words

hue
shade
chroma

but these are always associations and so imperfect 

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Studio

Juan A. Franco Ricardo. Hang Dry, 2025. digital photograph. [a seeping light comes through a dusty marked window pane. the intensity of the light renders much of the materials around and below in a dark contrast. the light folds over the edges, creating delicious highlights. at the center top a yellow caps hangs while below it, a necklace of flowers, warms the image with red and orange casts].

on saturday evening, i looked at how candle light wrapped around my fingers. a repeated turning of the hand, a glow rotating like the earth on its axis. there is also a light that pierces through my window in the afternoon year-round. it has intensity as its angle changes slightly through the seasons change. this light can feel beautiful, overwhelming, delightful, sweet or exhausting. it also has helped in drying collages, drying clothing or even illustrating the eclipse. i haven’t made much this week. certainly, it’s a time of maintenance, a busy lull that marks the end of the first month of the year. i didn’t realize that the color seeped through from the thoughts above.

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Scraps

1. an mta hallways with a tile work seen for the first time. 2. a very blue bed stuy sky. 3. probably not a very osha maneuver. 4. running in the cold so layers or something. 5. the sand was frozen for screwing 6. gorgeous tracks of sand and snow 7. the beams of the sun reaching like fingers to touch the sand 8. the beams again, but they go up this time. 9. vinyl art on the wall