SUBurban is an exhibition that examines the places we call home. The suburban sprawl has become so culturally pervasive that these seven artists have turned their attention toward that which lies at the margin of the urban experience. Souvenirs of providential childhood, routines of commuter living, and idiosyncrasies of urban planning are ripe for creative interpretation. In the hands of these artists, the suburbs come alive, flaws exposed, but always respected as a setting for human life.
Harry Bartnick pictures the environmental toll of an expanding urban population; the ordered streets and row houses spreading ever outward, devouring the native wilds like a hungry predator. In contrast, Patrick King's paintings are idyllic, seen from the vantage of memory. The suburban setting becomes a self-contained world, presided over by its unlikely masters: the neighbor kids.
Chris Leach makes scale his subject, reversing typical conditions for the viewing of images in his postage stamp-sized urban vistas. Rose DeSiano's DuraClear composites push photography into the third dimension, changing possible avenues for seeing the urban wasteland of commerce.
Jane Dickson's dollar stores and two-door garages could be located anywhere, almost archetypes for small-town existence, but her unusual choice of picture supports—linen, canvas, astroturf—create an indelible atmosphere. Medium is also inseparable from meaning in the work of Paul Chojnowski, whose torched drawings offer a contemporary update to the historical form of the nocturne, depicting nighttime commutes as a bleary landscapes of lights captured in the flash of an instant. Bill Miller creates his collages out of vintage linoleum, the very fabric of the suburban home.