Description

This installation is constructed in three parts; a foyer, a passage and a central space. The foyer features an image of a Japanese garden.  You can sense the care with which the gardeners have carefully combined a series of objects that look lovely in their arrangement.  They are not literal miniatures but they suggest tall, ancient tress, rooted on rolling hills that slope down to a valley. Six-foot-tall rocks resemble mountain cliffs. A combed field of stones is a quiet river that leads to an unknown sea.  At once we can be in looking at an intimate garden or we can imagine walking around an expansive landscape or even take the view of God, silently looking out over creation.  I have this garden image at the entrance to the installation to introduce the issue of scale and how a small version of life can transform ordinary images into metaphors. 

A tunnel leads to the heart of the installation.

When you enter The Image of the City,  it has a very graphic feel.  I say graphic in terms of flat design. I use unmixed colors, solid lines and bold forms to create the feeling of walking into a story or a drawing.  I want to let the audience know that I am not trying to echo real life, but constructing a psychological and emotional condition.  When you see the city in the artificial twilight you are seeing  a place of the mind and heart, not a place that exists on a map.

When looking at The Image of the City, the viewer can walk down the street, wonder about the inhabitants inside and try to imagine looking up for the stars.  Like in the Japanese garden, the viewer can also pull back and see the city from the vantage point of the lonely God who has been moved out to make room for human progress.

Industrial factories usually have smokestacks.  The smokestack can be a symbol of work and prosperity, but I find smokestacks to be sad and full of loneliness.  As the American economy has shifted away from manufacturing the smokestack is metamorphosing in to a relic.  I use the form of the smokestack because it is either full of smoke and fire or it is dormant and deteriorating, waiting out weather and time.  The smokestack also references cremation and somehow the guilt of the living .  By assigning factories and non- factory buildings' smokestacks, I find that the city seems to be smoldering from within. The stacks are not just there for utility but as a possible way to expel the ashes building up below.

This installation features an audio track that was played through speakers hidden in the buildings.  The sound was featured on National Public Radio’s “All things Considered” in June of 2006.  Listen to the segment.