2025

Oil on canvas

36 x 72 inches

This project was inspired by the "Stanley craze" where consumers rush out to collect the new season and new color tumblers that originally were marketed as a more economically sound option over plastic water bottles. 

The project began by painting garden and natural landscapes on to large stretched linen planes. These green areas were slowly eroded with with "carchitecture"- a phenomemon linked to isolation and hyperconsumption, a trend slowly being studied more in scientific literature. The car imagery was obfuscated with grids, pixels and cells before the entire large canvas was harvested into bits and pieces that became the background the stainless steel waterbottle displays. These grids of canvases entices the viewers and blurs the line of criticism, collection and consumption. 

A research project funded by a $2,500 award granted by Towson's Office of Undergraduate Research. This project was completed after reading "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs, "The End of Myth" by Greg Grandin, and "Confessions of a Recovering Engineer" by Charles Mahron. 

This series explores the isolation and degradation of mental health alongside the environment by policies that prioritize cars over people within urban areas. The accumulation of wider streets is correlated with hyper-consumption, isolation and lack of safety in environments that continually builds spaces for cars at the expense of the economically sound and environmentally conscious policies that could exist for a more equitable and healthy society.