Peculiar Houses

Once upon a time, buildings and homes mirrored transitions in landscapes. Builders appreciated the integration between the land and the things – the plants, the buildings, the mountains, the sun – that rise up from it. This is the fairy tale, and parts of fairy tales are always true. There is a lesson behind the story, but once people forget the story, the knowledge it contains disappears as well.

People directly alter landscapes, by bulldozing hills and by building roads. But people also indirectly change the environment, as a consequence of their consumption of resources and of pollution. These forces, acting in concert, override the regional influences of topography and climate on development.

Residents of housing developments receive a standardized product that changes little with regard to location. They may move across the country and find themselves a home remarkably similar to the one they left behind. In the past, as one moved from place to place, the materials available for construction and the diverse terrain dictated the style and the size of the buildings. Now the buildings themselves – the cities, the people – tend to exert more of a push in the opposite direction, by enacting changes in the landscape itself.

 

Rushhour/Roadtrip
2006, woodcut, linocut, polymer plate, archival pigment print, collage, variable dimensions

 

Birdhouse
2006, polymer plate, linocut, serigraph, chine collé, 6.5″ x 9″

 

Treehouse
2007, polymer plate, collagraph, graphite, collage, 92″ x 24″