California-based artist Ingrid Calame has developed a body of work inspired by stains and graffiti found on urban streets and sidewalks, which she captures through tracings and then transposes into richly layered drawings and paintings. Calame describes the colorful and complex overlapping patterns that she composes as “constellations.”

In 2006, Calame visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where she made tracings of the skid marks, tire tracks, and other marks left by racing cars, using such sources to create a new body of work. By layering these dynamic forms in high-keyed colors on an aluminum ground, and employing the same oil-based enamel paint that is used on window signs and cars at the Speedway, Calame arrived at an abstract equivalent for the mass spectacle of speed and excitement for which the race is famed.