Mountains Beyond
Mountains is a 40” x 30” pen drawing on paper. This piece is intended to
express my experience and views regarding suburban America. It is an
amalgamation of everything I have grown to resent about modern, middle-class
suburbia. Born into the middle-class myself, I’ve
spent much of my existence within suburban surroundings. I’ve lived out years
of boredom within repetitive housing clusters. Monotonous, dead-end retail jobs
at commercial shopping centers have sucked away pieces of my soul. I’ve spent
uncountable rage-inducing hours in the expensive, dangerous, isolation pods we
call automobiles.
Overreliance on
automobiles is a major theme to this work. As a society, I believe we place
entirely too much importance on cars. Over the past century, our country has
been covered in parking lots and highways in order to accommodate the
ubiquitous sedan, minivan, and sports utility vehicle. Suburban planners relentlessly cater to
motorists, providing their cars with wider roads and monstrous parking garages.
People are encouraged, even nearly forced, to use their cars to get anywhere.
In today’s suburban world, it is extremely difficult to do anything without
some kind of motor vehicle. I can’t even get
to many of the stores along Veteran’s Boulevard in Metairie by foot or bicycle,
because there are no bike lanes or even sidewalks to speak of. Highways and an
enormous parking lot surround the mountain in my drawing, with no room for
pedestrians to even breathe.
Another matter I
wanted to explore in this drawing is brand oversaturation. Much of our country
is being taken over by a relatively small number of businesses. Big box stores
and restaurant chains have flourished in this country because of their
familiarity and convenience to customers. Slowly but surely, our commercial
landscape is becoming the same no matter where one goes. I have filled my
imaginary landscape with these all-too recognizable businesses, often repeating
the same locations a number of times.
To make this
drawing, I first created a digital collage in Photoshop using found images. I
made sure to primarily use images of stores that mostly cater to middle-class
suburbanites, hence the lack of McDonalds
locations, and the inclusion of multiple Olive
Garden restaurants. I tried to primarily use national store and restaurant
chains, as I wanted this drawing to represent any suburb in America. After
making the digital collage, I created the final drawing using a grid system, as
well as a projector. The entire piece was done utilizing cross-hatching
techniques with various sizes of micron pens.
