Union Square W. (2015)
Reality as abstract
Living in NYC for 7 years didn’t quite make me a New Yorker. As a native Californian, I found that of those I met who moved to NYC, Californians were most likely to eventually leave, whether back to CA or elsewhere. I enjoyed my time there, but never thought about doing any art about NYC, until I did. By the time I did, it was quite late and we were already starting to plan our eventual move back to CA.
It wasn’t a matter of wanting to make some big statement about the city. Rather, after countless days spent out walking about, it occurred to me that by looking up at the street signs on corners (which you do often, to gain your bearings), the city viewed from that angle, the buildings on that corner, created a rather unique image every time, and the story of the city’s visuals could be told just in these slices
Since Broadway runs the entire length of Manhattan, where we lived, it occurred to me you could trace the entire city through images just looking up at the intersections of each street with Broadway. There were a few other rules—when creating series I always think in terms of guidelines which will allow the images to have a common identity.
