I'm Not Here: Scenes from Roads Most Traveled, Spartanburg and Mill Spring
These reverse glass paintings were created between 2007-2008 during a year-long artist-in-residence program at Hub-Bub in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
My relocation from New York City to Spartanburg, and my feeling that I may never return to New York, led me to question the definition of home in fundamental ways and contributed to an overwhelming feeling of homelessness and displacement. The reverse glass paintings are influenced by these feelings; they attempt to assess and define the qualities of home.
The series of 51 small reverse glass paintings “I’m Not Here,” began with the simple desire to become better acquainted with Spartanburg in the way I had become accustomed to in New York—on foot. I began a series of undirected, unplanned walks around the area, inspired by the Situationist concept of dérive. It was on these walks that I began to identify and photograph the small beauties of Spartanburg— abandoned industrial and commercial structures, old cemeteries, and brilliant sunsets. This process affirmed a sense of home and place in the form of my developing Spartanburg aesthetic, in the choices that I made for which images begged inclusion in the painting series. The result, somewhat unintentionally, is a series that highlights not only my enjoyment of a new and different landscape, but also the anxiety and alienation that these solitary and depressed landscapes reflected in me.
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