in the studio - city musings

"and you think you know me"

7" x 7"

digital photo prints on vellum, marker, mixed media collage on paper

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I am fascinated by the buildings in a city and the patterns that they create as you walk. Looking up, there are layers of architectural styles and layers of shapes all pointed at different angles that totally shift as you move through them. And then I imagine what it must look like from above - all the structures set on their own map of intersecting streets, grid lines; the ways in and out of the city. 

 And within this ever changing structural collage are the human beings adding their own ephemera ..... trying to find their way.

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I wanted to experiment with a collage built in layers using my photographs. After some experimentation I found a vellum that gave me the right amount of transparency and was also a good quality to print on. Putting some restrictions on myself I wanted to use only photos I had taken in NYC over the past year and have all the images be black and white. Once I found the underlying map it gave me a unifying motif as well as a direction for color. I think I will use this transparency/layering idea more.