Pastures
The Pastures was comprised of a collection of early Holland Dutch-brick buildings along the Hudson River in the southeast corner 0f the city of Albany, NY---originally an area that was cleared for pasture during the time of the first European settlements. In recent decades it became a neglected yet enchanting twelve city blocks of decaying architecture, having reverted back to another kind of wilderness, ignored by the surrounding municipality. Buildings no longer seemed as if they had ever been built so much as having grown and protruded through shrouds of vegetation, flaking paint and brick, rain-distilled dust. An ambiguous quality of abandonment which on the surface appeared mysterious or sometimes threatening I found to be graphic and fascinating.
Two years consisted of intently exploring and discovering the Pastures and responding visually to its many areas of character. Most often I spent days portraying an imaginative sense of existing conditions, while taking on commissioned work that provided interpretations for the city’s Urban Renewal Agency (--my own concepts for a revitalized Pastures neighborhood of once elegant Federal, Greek Revival, and Italianate style buildings.) Time in the Pastures eventually engendered multiple directions in the form of more definitive, complex drawings. Restoration architects aware of the work would occasionally request a drawing for a major historical reconstruction. This was unfamiliar territory, my taking on an additional step of inquiry and knowledge.
Two years consisted of intently exploring and discovering the Pastures and responding visually to its many areas of character. Most often I spent days portraying an imaginative sense of existing conditions, while taking on commissioned work that provided interpretations for the city’s Urban Renewal Agency (--my own concepts for a revitalized Pastures neighborhood of once elegant Federal, Greek Revival, and Italianate style buildings.) Time in the Pastures eventually engendered multiple directions in the form of more definitive, complex drawings. Restoration architects aware of the work would occasionally request a drawing for a major historical reconstruction. This was unfamiliar territory, my taking on an additional step of inquiry and knowledge.
