In 2015, I left New York with my husband to spend three years living in the high desert of New Mexico while we pursued a degree in architecture (his formal, mine by proxy). To spend meaningful time in places so totally different from one’s home is to compare, contrast, and analyze each as a place of habitation.
Architecture is not just about buildings. It is the study of people, materials, energy, light, sound, history, art, composition, and the sun. Most of all, though, it requires an understanding of site, a place of real or potential human occupation, distinct from a place or an environment.
And so my principal occupation during this time was site analysis – in New Mexico I saw petroglyphs many centuries old that now sit at the western edge of Albuquerque; in Japan I traveled by train and foot to see the ancient and perpetually renewed Ise Shrine; I spent a night at the utopian settlement of Arcosanti, in Arizona, where the labors of love are all that keep its progress forward; and I followed the paths of felled trees in Oregon and British Columbia, learning about a new way to build.
The paintings here are about this time, and while they are not of buildings, they are nonetheless part of this study of architecture.
