“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” -Italo Calvino

The cityscape images are part of an ongoing visual exploration stemming from a lifetime of living, working and playing in The City. These images are centered on issues of environmental space and its affective impact on modern life. The urban panoramas document a rapidly changing city that through its robust development often masks an underlying history of racial politics and disenfranchisement of local communities. Though playful, several images serve as visual archives of little know history such as the Crown Heights riots along Eastern Parkway, the destruction of the African American settlement Seneca Village in upper Manhattan to build Central Park, and the bittersweet legacy of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, whose Japanese Garden landscape designer died in a Japanese internment camp. The work is created in the studio by collaging photographs taken on site from multiple viewpoints. These are then collaged as a new image. The literary titles sometimes reference the work of Rem Koolhas and Italo Calvino.

The exhibition “The Alchemist in The City” has been sponsored by Rhodes + Brito Architects and will open at The New York Public Library George Bruce Branch on 125th Street in N.Y., New York on January 7th 2019. The body of work was created as Artist in Residence at the Church of St.Francis Xavier, N.Y. New York.