Ning
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Playground
For me, a playground is more than just equipment. It is a space filled with colour, laughter, and a sense of community. Because of this, I want to develop a series of playgrounds across the city, starting from a simple observation that gradually expands into reflections on memory, place, community, and identity.
This series explores playgrounds as shared community spaces that hold memories of childhood, joy, and belonging. Using CMYK printmaking, I translate photographs of neighborhood playgrounds into layered prints that highlight their bright colours and geometric structures. Through this process, playgrounds become both personal memories and abstract landscapes of community life.
Playground can represent several layers:
Childhood & Memory:
• Where friendships, imagination, early social life happens, • A spaces adults later remember emotionally.
Community & Shared Space:
• Belong to everyone: families, kids, immigrants, neighbours all meet there.
• Every neighborhood playground looks slightly different
Colour & Form:
• Playground structures are almost like abstract sculptures. • Bright colors, simple shapes.visually perfect for printmaking layers
Time:
• Playgrounds change as children grow up
• Equipment gets worn, repainted, replaced
• A place of temporary stages of life
CMYK Printmaking
In 2025, I received an Artist Development Microgrant from Calgary Arts Development. Through this support, I learned screenprinting with professional printmaking artist Yilu Xing at Burnt Toast Studio, a local screenprint studio in Calgary.
During this time, I began experimenting with translating playground photographs into CMYK screenprints. By separating the image into cyan, magenta, yellow, and black layers, I explored how photographic images of playgrounds could be transformed through the screenprinting process while maintaining their vibrant colours and structural forms.
The layered CMYK process also reflects how playgrounds themselves are built from colour, structure, and overlapping forms. Through this process, photography is translated into printmaking, allowing the playground to shift between documentation and abstraction.
This process became the starting point for developing the Playground series.
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