Reliquaries
Five levels of row houses, numbered 1-45, align the layers of this paper suburban landscape. Like laundry, the sun and five clouds are suspended on clotheslines above. On the reverse, five strata are distinguished: roots, bones, minerals, water, and fire. A crowned, nude figure floats in the water. Completed in my 46th year, this piece is a meditation of the forty-five years that I have lived in the shadow of New York City. It is my intention to claim the much-maligned suburban landscape, the only place I have known as home, as productive and inspiring. I aim to challenge the ignorant assumptions that artists thrive only in metropolitan or rural areas, and that, “suburbia is death to the artist.” I include the upper case U in suburbia to reference my mother’s maiden name of Urban.