2/16

The response to my Chelsea street portraits was overall pretty positive, but most of the faculty felt it wasn't enough. That they'd seen similar things in the past and that I needed to expand my ways of portraying the city. That simple portraits weren't enough. People suggested reading up on 'sense of place', which while sounding good remains one of the most nebulous terms thrown around art school. I even had a faculty member tell me he had no idea what it meant. I agreed, although I did find a short one by political geographer John Agnew that I liked. By 'sense of place' he means the 'subjective and emotional attachment people have to place'.
So I'm trying to incorporate some representation of my emotional attachment to Chelsea. How I do this is still unclear but I think it will include urban landscapes, more formal portraiture, and possibly still life's, panoramas and architectural details. After that, who knows?
I'm also continuing to use the idea of 'All-American' city as a way to frame all of these disparate ideas. The All- American City award is given by the National Civic League annually to ten cities in the United States. Chelsea won in 1998, the year I moved here. So one of the questions I keep asking myself is what is American and what does it mean to be All-American? Can there ever be a single definition or is this one of those things that's forever changing. Fluid.
I also like the idea of my work questioning the traditional notion of All American. Given the current political discourse regarding immigration, the fact that Chelsea is largely Hispanic (more than 50%) challenges directly, conservative views as to what is and who are Americans.