Artwork - Geometry and Territory

033_01_912-931

While building affordable housing on the West Side of Chicago, I came across this site of domestic objects that had been strewn across a vacant lot as if caught in a tornado. For me, the still life was poetic.

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This series draws upon a vast archive of images that trace a history of uprisings, protests, riots, massacres, and revolutions that are connected to race while also juxtaposing those images to images that trace Late Capitalism in America.

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029_02_787-791 and 029_01_792-894 are particularly personally significant for me. They offer a journey through the neighborhoods adjacent to the neighborhood of Hyde Park in which I grew up. These include Bronzeville, Washington Park, Englewood, and Woodlawn. When I grew up in Hyde Park in the late 1980s, these were neighborhoods that I was told were not to be entered because they dangerous. Today as I live on the Near West Side of Chicago, they remain neighborhoods that the news media reports as being very dangerous and plagued by significant gun violence. When one actually ventures into these areas, however, one finds less danger and more the traces of decades of disinvestment.

029_02_787-791

029_02_787-791 and 029_01_792-894 are particularly personally significant for me. They offer a journey through the neighborhoods adjacent to the neighborhood of Hyde Park in which I grew up. These include Bronzeville, Washington Park, Englewood, and Woodlawn. When I grew up in Hyde Park in the late 1980s, these were neighborhoods that I was told were not to be entered because they dangerous. Today as I live on the Near West Side of Chicago, they remain neighborhoods that the news media reports as being very dangerous and plagued by significant gun violence. When one actually ventures into these areas, however, one finds less danger and more the traces of decades of disinvestment.

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Like many series, 028_02_752-786 began with found material. In this case, the material was a considerable amount of wallpaper that had been removed from a dining room that I was about to renovate. The gold silk wallpaper had an incredible quality that made it difficult for me to discard. As I contemplated what to do with the many sheets, I was inspired by the gold ground and inherent flatness of the surface to explore a series of icon paintings tied to traditional icons painting on gold surfaces. Instead, however, of choosing to create images, I favored an iconoclast approach that depicted the person via text.

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The initial intention was to write a screenplay that told the story of several generations and how they interacted with the landscape stretching between a cattle ranch in Texas and the Stockyards of Chicago. It was also concerned with the legacy of the Stockyards, Bertolt Brechts’ Joan of the Stockyards, and the story of Joan of Arc. While the screenplay was written, the more successful work exists in the found images used to illustrate this story and the open narrative they suggest rather than one fixed by my imagination.

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The numerous vacant lots encountered while walking across the West Side of Chicago are striking. They bear witness to the destruction that occurred during ’68 Riots following the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and decades of under-investment. This series within the broader work brings together archival images of the neighborhood dating back to the late 19th C., photos of the assassination and riots, local activists such as the Vice Lords, local industry such as the former headquarters of Sears, contemporary images, process photos, and collages.

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The numerous vacant lots encountered while walking across the West Side of Chicago are striking. They bear witness to the destruction that occurred during ’68 Riots following the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and decades of under-investment. This series within the broader work is created through tracing remnants of demolished buildings with energetic patterns, using these objects to create folds, and ultimately creating a new territory from the resulting geometry that traces the chaos of the event.

021_02_708-717

The numerous vacant lots encountered while walking across the West Side of Chicago are striking. They bear witness to the destruction that occurred during ’68 Riots following the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and decades of under-investment. This series within the broader work explores the surfaces of the buildings that might have been there through wallpaper, traces of textures, photographs, and empty forms created by a missing object.

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The boundary between painting and sculpture, the limits of the frame, the relationship between abstraction and representation, and the way that monumental manufacturing efforts that have vanished beneath sprawling strip malls are remembered drive the content of this work. It evolved from the photo series 010 to become these constructs.

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For several years I ran a small office with a few other people devoted to exploring ways of attracting reinvestment in the West Side of Chicago. This effort involved developing what we called an “urban operating system” as well as kit of parts to rehabilitate the aging housing stock. This set of documents summarized our approach to redevelopment and how it might be scaled beyond Chicago.

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For several years I ran a small office with a few other people devoted to exploring ways of attracting reinvestment in the West Side of Chicago. This effort involved developing what we called an “urban operating system” as well as kit of parts to rehabilitate the aging housing stock. This set of photographs, in particular, was used as site research for the proposals we developed to attract interest from investors.

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A particular investigation of a place, history, or community often leads to artwork in a variety of media. In this case, photographs, sculptures, and this book. The format of a book was chosen to contain the narrative that grew out of my experience walking along the road and scrutinizing the photographs that resulted. The narrative ultimately is a utopia that images a new relationship to our built environment.

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The area surrounding Western Avenue includes a number of vacant lots that are the result of a broad transformation of the area between the 1940s and the present. Crucial in this transformation was the 1968 Riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during which hundreds of buildings were set ablaze and later demolished. Objects found in these lots were combined to create a frame for the photographs of Western Ave.

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Long roads running parallel create cross-sections of neighborhoods and communities, ways of building and decorating the landscape. Walking from one end to the other provides and opportunity to look at the people who are there and the materiality of the world they inhabit. It shows difference and continuity – a long history and idealized future – that can help us understand what is going on in the world.

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As cities develop, there are often sites that are leftover from particular projects, buildings, and infrastructure. Perhaps they are made less desirable by these new investments. Perhaps they are difficult to build on because of what takes place below or above. Nevertheless, they often hold great beauty and potential for new encounters, programs, and events that might enrich the life of the city. This set of photographs looks at one such site above what is known as Hubbard Cave in Chicago.

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The fortunate circumstances of some people as opposed to others call attention to the structure of wealth and the chance of our existence. So much of this chance is characterized by investment of energy by previous generations to transform their material circumstances. So often, this has required intense confrontation with the land – for many resulting is little wealth at all. This work explores that contrast.

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Beyond a tradition of illustrating grand narratives, artwork should render the invisible, fleeting, overlooking, underappreciated, and undervalued so that we might have time and space for consideration and a new basis of knowledge. This work is concerned with sites around the city of Chicago that once produced the goods defining our world - in this case, the Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works that made a century of telephones among countless other objects.

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Some places and things linger in one state for a prolonged period of time – perhaps decaying, in other case being meticulously cared for. At some point, however, a more profound change might occur that radically transforms the materiality or negates it entirely. These photographs explore both infrastructure that has been in place for decades and will likely endure as well as buildings about to experience a rebirth.

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