Humbug — Op-Art Cartoon Tabby, Gallery Courtyard, Berlin

Two honest options existed for this piece. A tiger-striped tabby, which is what the reference photographs showed. Or a pattern that does something to your eye. The arts centre chose the second and we spent three weeks trying to talk them out of it, then built it and stopped arguing.

The problem with stripes on a curve

A straight pattern on a curved animal reads as wallpaper that has been stuck onto a shape. To make the pattern belong to the form, it has to warp with the surface. We mapped the stripes onto the 3D model so that they follow the actual topography of the cat, compressing where the form turns away and stretching where it opens up.

Then we pushed further than the model wanted. Along the spine and down the front of the chest, the stripes deliberately tighten past the natural rate, which is what produces the shimmer. That shimmer is the only reason a static object can hold a viewer’s attention from across a courtyard.

Where the pattern had to stop

Total coverage looked wrong, and also destroyed the character. We kept the eyes and the inside of the ears as solid flat areas, and let the stripes resume behind them. Two clean islands in a field of interference. It is the only legible bit on the whole piece and it does all the work of making the object an animal.

Build

Fibreglass over a steel frame, finished in a hard gloss. Op art depends on contrast, and a matte finish in Berlin’s grey light kills the contrast before the pattern has a chance. Every stripe edge was masked by hand; there are several hundred of them, and the masking took longer than the painting.

In the courtyard

The piece is worst at noon and best in the late afternoon, when the courtyard goes into shade and the stripes carry on moving without any help from the sun. The arts centre schedules its openings for the evening now.