Suburban Abstract I

Suburban Abstract - a series of photos of everyday, usually unnoticed, abstract lil corners of suburbia.  I took inspiration from Sophie Tauber and the Constructivists for this one.  They were one of the first group of artists to really create totally abstract work, which they did thru the use of geometric forms.  Tauber was one of the first artists to produce truly abstract art, art that was totally non-representational, and non-figurative.  It's hard to remember in our world today, but at one time no one had ever submitted a painting before that was colored squares, or drips of paint, and if they had, they'd've never got to exhibit those paintings in galleries and shows where wealthy buyers would've found them worthy of spending money on. The early abstract artists had to find sound reasons to base their abstractions on, in order to convince the art buying public that they weren't just playing around, that there was actually a method to their madness.  Which is why the different movements at that time had manifestoes, and complex reasonings.  The Impressionists were interested in painting light, rather than faithfully reproducing the world naturalistically.  The Expressionists projected their emotions on what they saw, and abstracted figures according to what they felt about them.  The Cubists broke figures down into sections of light and proportion in order to make a figure seem three-dimensional, and used collage to denote the passing of time (it wasn't just breaking stuff into cubes btw).  The Dadaists simply rejected notions of "correctness," while the Surrealists attempted to re-create the subconscious world, rather than the conscious natural world.  

Sophie Tauber worked as a designer for the textile industry, and realized she could use textile designs as a jumping off point to create totally abstract paintings and embroidered canvases, as part of the Dada movement, where her work was accepted as anti-art.  When the Dadaists began to dissolve, she found kindred souls amongst the Constructivists, who were using her ideas, and building on them, creating abstract art built from geometric forms.  By using geometry as a base, the Constructivists could create work that was totally non-figurative.   

When i take photo walks, I like to find strange parts of our world that usually go unnoticed.  I often walk in a high scale neighborhood, with homes worth quite a bit of money, where all the lawns are shorn close and cut cleanly, the flower beds are well tended, the cars sparkle, the lawns are devoid of tools or children's playthings, and even the sidewalks have interesting patterns that are kept squeaky clean.  While taking photos, I discovered these neat lil geometric designs, as part of our everyday, quotidian world, that seemed to abstract a neighborhood that was rigidly real.  I composed my photos to isolate portions of lawn, and sidewalk, in order to re-create them into something else again.  This is one of that series.  

It does make me wonder, living in a poorer neighborhood, where most people don't have time to make things perfect, how these folks find the time to do these sorts of things?  I'm single, and always have been - is that it? is it because, with a husband and wife team, one person has the time to work on the lawn and create such perfection while the other person does all the household chores?  Or is it coz these people have money, and can afford to pay someone to make their lawn look so pretty?  It's funny, how a whole neighborhood can look surreally ordered and organized. 

Suburban Abstracts II & III
   


MORE ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY