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"All elements of the cultural past must be reinvested or disappear."
As a child growing up in the working class neighborhoods of Baltimore, my first drawing tools were the ample supply of mulch chips that peppered the flowerbeds of my front yard. Bending down on hands and knees, the sidewalk turned into a never-ending piece of paper where I could draw the mysterious hulking factories, gas tanks, and watertowers that surrounded my home and called my family to work every morning. And as the mulch made contact with the gritty concrete surface, it would screech, scrape and crumble with every mark, leaving a rich brown powdery trail until the piece in my hand had dissolved. Today, the mulch chips have been replaced by traditional materials, but the intention of documenting industrial landscape remains my purpose for making art. Working from photographs taken on-sight, I utilize charcoal, rust, and cut-paper collage to explore current issues of neglect and decay surrounding industrial architecture. Shifting familiar imagery from dimension to silhouette, I remove structures from their original context so they can be contemplated in their raw form. This simplified transformation communicates my personal experience of industrial architecture's sublime nature and its iconic connection to a community and period in history that is being demolished. |
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