This series is based on a stack a blueprints found in a friends’ wall. The blueprints are from a 1967 high-rise building project in Toronto named Saint James Town. After some research, I discovered that it was conceived of as a response to the need for dense urban housing, intended for the bourgeoning sector of white-collar workers in the downtown core. Saint James Town survives today and has now become almost the polar opposite of its’ initial vision. 50 years later, the modernist ideal has now turned to squalor and slum, overrun with crime, over-population and disrepair.
The Saint James Town blueprints are the basis for a group of sculptural works and lithographic prints created in 2016. Small sections of the blueprints were transformed into human-scaled sculptures that use the language of abstract modernism as the springboard toward something new. The surfaces of the pieces are treated with the same attention as my two-dimensional work; paint will be used in conjunction with lithography to build layers of depth and meaning. Details from the original blueprints will be brought into the visual dialog and used to further the discussion.
