It is with real pleasure that I announce the inclusion of my work in this year’s Arts Council Winston-Salem, ArtPop2020 Billboard Competition. Big shout-out to Lamar and Adams advertising, for sponsoring this opportunity for local artists to reach the broad general public. Big shout-out to ArtPop2020 and the Arts Council for making this a reality. The project has been receiving very favorable coverage from the Winston-Salem Journal, so thank you all for that as well!

July 14, 2020 – https://journalnow.com/entertainment/arts/these-6-artists-will-get-their-work-on-billboards-in-12-counties-artpop-street-gallery/article_39cf246c-0e8a-5d4c-be2b-cf6111f651dd.html

July 23, 2020 – https://journalnow.com/opinion/editorials/our-view-drive-in-art/article_af8a3889-c28e-59b4-b8b5-66bcf23926f2.html

For a deeper dive into how this relates to some earlier work, read on:

In the 1990’s, I was spending a lot of time in the studio making art about being on the road, developing images that reflected the alienation of life behind the wheel.

The work that emerged was a series of drawings and paintings about the highway, and what it means to feel as if you’re sitting still while traveling forward at 70 miles an hour. Mostly it was a flatness that I found pervasive, in mood, in emotion, which I addressed in parallel-to-picture plane or one point perspective compositions.  

It was a response to what I understood to be a disconnect between the presumed natural world tied to notions of traditional landscape, and what I was witnessing before me, a technologically contrived wasteland for which there was only one escape, forward behind glass, behind the wheel.

I’m not sure if there are any conclusions to be drawn between these older pieces and the fact that a drawing I created actually made it onto one of these advertising devices, but I think there is something there.

Can an image designed with the fostering of human relationships in mind use the apparatus of alienation to reach its goal?