By
Erik Schmitt
Piece description from the artist
Abandoned industrial structures and decaying communities have become part of the American landscape. Often they sit like islands surrounded by contemporary sprawl. As we become further removed from the craft-oriented and working-class past these areas become reminders of our evolution into a post-industrial culture. This project documents the massive structures of concrete, glass and steel that make up this landscape.In an effort to capture the sense of scale and rich detail of these regions the work probes what we think of as the traditional picture space. Foreground, background and subject have been isolated and reconstructed. The skies, structures and roads are separate planes—the sense of perspective is disrupted. The final large scale constructed landscapes focus our gaze onto these industrial and engineering marvels.
Archival pigment prints on Moab Colorado Fiber Gloss paper, editions of 20
Erik's interest in the arts was borne out of an upbringing in a family of creative people—a father and 2 aunts who attended Black Mountain College and exposed him to the visual arts and fired his imagination with stories of studying with Robert Rauschenberg, Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa and Merce Cunningham. He grew up in Seattle and the San Juan Islands but moved to the Bay Area to study at the California College of the Arts. There he found himself in the midst of a Bauhaus–inspired approach to arts education–studying design, photography and painting. This lack of barriers between the branches of the arts continues to inform his work.
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