"Hometown"

Here's the new kid in the studio, another "little" piece (24"x80") titled "Hometown."  It combines images from my hometown, though it could be practically anywhere in the United States.  I'm thinking more and more about work that addresses the repetition in our lives, the efforts of living day-to-day and still trying to achieve what is meaningful to us.  Trying to remember the big goals while stuck in our routines of paying bills, mowing the lawn, going to work, coming home from work. 

It's also a piece about urban sprawl and that fact that it could be almost anywhere, any suburb in America.  We've lost something critical in the need to throw up buildings at break-neck speed without paying attention to what is being lost.  Prime farm land, open space, wildlife habitat--all might be in the recent history of our own subdivision, our own backyard.

Here are a few process pieces for you--this one took quite a bit of math to achieve mostly because it is painted on an old interior door.  That means it isn't exactly 24"x80", but 23 5/8" by 79 3/8".  I have a pretty mathematical mind and I like the craftsmanship of these kinds of pieces, so it took me a bit to set up.

 

"Hometown" image 1: playing with pics and grids

"Hometown" image 2: contour lines (I actually really liked it at this stage and might try to do more work that uses these sketchy lines exclusively)

"Hometown" image 3: blocking in the values and rearranging some houses (Ah, the power of art, to be able to move a house on a map for the sheer whimsy of it)

As always I welcome your feedback.  I'm hoping to turn this into the first of a series, stay tuned.

Dawn