This Space Available

Installation Details

This huge, dimensional painting turns the idea of a “vacant” space inside out. Hundreds of drawings of familiar Tempe landmarks are layered together into an organic, gestural map that grows into and across a series of 12 windows. The different layers of the piece play with the viewer’s understanding of space to create a disorienting landscape of recognizable locations.

Materials typically seen in the windows of closed businesses such as plywood, papered windows, and retail signage are transformed in a colorful painted and collaged tangle of places. The piece moves from one material to the next, referencing the transitional nature of all spaces. In This Space Available, many different parts come together into a larger whole that is both cohesive and yet barely comprehensible, paralleling the process of forming a sense of place from many different individual memories repeated and layered together.

This artwork was commissioned by City of Tempe Public Art.

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