2016, photographs, papers, acetate with digital image, pen, sewing thread, space, 14 x 14 inches.
There is a horrible sports facility where I take the boys to do climbing and tennis. I hate to think of them under the busy loud Westway and inside this dirty, crowded, and airless industrial complex. That is not what physical activity is supposed to be about. What is this rat hole life we have cornered ourselves into and can barely afford.
Getting back to the point of the artwork…..Ironically, this aggressive dilapidated, industrial, city-scape, holds intense beauty. There are wires, concrete overpasses, cars roaring past, chain fences, cranes, cracked walls, dirt. Tufts of green are trying to grow here and there. The graffiti are phenomenal. Every once in awhile, there will be a sunset that will be still my heart. The ugly and beauty clash together and emerge anew to make somewhere elevated in its ability to express reality of the truest kind. This is the world that we live in now. There is crazy stimulation: fast moving life, ugly things bearing down on us, noises that won’t go away, and routes we have to take with blockades along the way. Despite that, people make beautiful things, nature is, and the sky and sun will always find their way inside the holes.