These images are posted in reverse chronological order; newest first.
I began this series of drawings a few days after Hurricane Sandy destroyed parts of my hometown New York. It was late October 2012, I had moved from Brooklyn to Cambridge, MA just a few months earlier.
This event provoked a sense of dissonance. I felt both a strong connection and great distance from the city that holds so many personal memories.
In creating this suite of sketches, I imagined a disproportionate response to the flooding; I decided to take the concept of sea walls to the extreme.
As the drawings progressed, their meaning evolved to convey the more paranoid aspects of the original idea. They’re about walling off sections of any city into self-governing City States. The walls prevent and contain damage from a range of real and perceived threats.
I was interested in presenting a range of viewpoints and approaches within the series itself. In turn each image suggests a new avenue of exploration. I completed the series in July 2014.
The small scale and rapid execution evident in the actual sketches is intended as contrast to the unimaginable size and scope of the walls proposed within the images themselves. In addition, the scale allowed me to create a large number of drawings during brief bursts of activity... In fact, being that this work was intended for viewing on the web, the scale of the intended original depends on the size of your device.
To create these sketches I collected stock images and real estate photos of the five boroughs posted on Google. These images were then printed out on an ink-jet, and drawn and painted upon with pen, ink and acrylic.
