Peripheral
Geographies
After many years living in other locations, I have recently returned
to the Western United States, the landscape of my youth.
The American West of my memories seems disturbingly different than
the developed, suburbanized reality of the contemporary environment.
The familiar outline of the mountain range is still visible, but
we are no longer in the natural areas that have historically
defined the West. Instead we experience it at a distance,
from the mundane in-between places at the edge of the cities.
Out here in the parking lot and along the road is our chosen perspective.
Even though our contemporary landscape is different, imbedded are
certain values long associated with the West.
Travel
is an essential tradition, from homesteaders crossing to Oregon,
to dust bowl farmers escaping to California. On the aptly-named
freeway, perhaps the ambivalent associations with movement finds
a contemporary equivalent: there is a similar sense of optimism,
anonymity, possibility, independence and suspension of responsibilities.
The rest areas and gas stations along the road provide comfort,
sustenance and familiarity in a new place. But in travel there
is also the feeling of dislocation, loneliness and searching.
Personal identity, time and place become negotiable and slippery.
Our contemporary landscape is built for mobility and as such, it
connects us to the long heritage of movement across the West.
In
this work I have tried to render the man-made with the same degree
of care as a more traditional, nature-based landscape image.
It is odd to find as much sympathy with car roofs and restrooms
as with meadows, mountains and streams. Admittedly, these
places are not beautiful in a traditional sense, but my aim is not
to condemn or ridicule what we have created. We are both attracted
and repulsed by these unintentional places. Our landscape is constructed
by us, and as such is a reflection of our conflicting desires and
wishes. |