Vinyl cuts
T4T Art Collective Group Show
MK Gallery, Portland State University, Portland OR
2022
These two vinyl cut outs are shadows cast by street signs on the empty sidewalks of Portland at night. In the abstraction of infrastructure, I see potential for a softening of rigidity, a conversation between the natural and the built environment, a poetical reenvisioning of how we interface with each other and our surroundings, and a more fluid and functional relationship between people and the cities they live in.
The artist Paula Wilson said once in an interview, “the life force of a thing can be completely created by its shadow. As I navigated bureaucratic procedures with the NYC Department of Transportation through my Crosswalk Fantasy intersection intervention, learned new technical vocabulary to communicate with city officials and traffic engineers, relocated to the transit and city planning hub of Portland, OR to finish grad school, and begun collaborating with a group of 5th grade school crossing guards, the visual language of the street became an orienting guidepost and obsession for me. I am intrigued by the standardized symbols of communication that attempt to organize how we move and coexist in public space, and in doing so, create a shared optical and physical lexicon for us as a civic body. Standard as they are, I see beauty in the stop sign, the traffic cone, the crosswalk, both for the elemental qualities of their shape and color, and for how they contribute to the complex dynamics of human cooperation and interactivity.
