Murals and Public Art

Dream Home

Dream Home was a family home in Rowayton, Connecticut, painted over four days before it was destroyed over three to make way for a new home build. That experience is gone.

The remaining pieces of Dream Home are nods to a moment that cannot be re-experienced, their hanging wires and rough edges clues for what can never be fully returned to the artwork. Are these pieces souvenirs of that experience? Relics? Monuments? And is this act of removal from their larger context one of salvage, preservation, or simply further transformation, the inherent energy of artmaking?

What Dream Home was: for a few days, it was as if out of a fantasy or dream itself. Outside, the dissolution of the lines of windows and front hedges under paint colors too bright for most suburban blocks created a collective, public act of disorientation, temporarily obliterating what we recognize as a house. Inside, there was a hearth where a family might have gathered in some past time, but its edges have been swallowed by paint that doesn't allow one to distinguish between floor and walls. No one lives in this home anymore. Doors seem to disappear; paint travels sideways across windows, climbs the ceiling. Has this home been desecrated by these acts of marking, or properly acknowledged before it is bid farewell, before one dream is replaced by another? For Dream Home holds the future, too: its planned demolition made way for the owner’s dream house in the literal sense: a home which will appear as a recognizable house most of us know—the windows will be windows, doorways will be clearly distinguished; it will blend in, without visible signs of its past.

And you, for a brief moment in between the fever dream and the blending in, noticed all this, noticed the demolition sign that wasn’t particularly troubling before the house became a work of art. You noticed when it was too late to do anything about it except watch the claw come and tear it all down, which maybe you did with some form of discomfort or acceptance or glee. As you cannot avoid staring at a house that is spray painted pink, you cannot avoid the reality of the inherently destructive energy of American ownership, which favors throwaway culture and impermanence over what was once someone else’s private dream.

Below is a selection of photographs of the installation itself and the salvaged pieces from the work.

Photographer - Stephen Emerick

UNTITLED (SPACE 1)

Untitled (Space 1) is part painting, part sculpture, part installation, but mostly a place. A room within the gallery to enter and take a moment to absorb. The original intention was to create a painting that the viewer would step into, and it is still very much that. It is all around the viewer and there isn’t one singular focal point. Changing positions provide a new piece to consider. Each rotation of the body creates a new view and a new crop of the work. For these reasons it was important to create the work as an assembled whole. The viewer has already committed to stepping inside and my hope is that they will take the time to look, really look, at the work up close and dissect the layers, texture, and color. The space is intimate, only 6 by 8 by 8 feet inside, and this intimacy encourages quiet consideration of the work. Through the creation of the piece I found myself spending non-painting time inside of it. It became an oasis in the studio. Even though it was still technically a work in progress, it felt like a break from the typical studio grind.

The closeness of the walls presented an unexpected parameter during it’s creation. It is impossible to step back from the work like a traditional painting. It cannot be viewed as a whole and thus the solution to one visual problem potentially created a new one in the opposite corner. Finishing the work became elusive. The audience should feel this energy a little bit. Not that it is unfinished, but that there’s a lot to take in if one spends the time looking.

Photographer - Stephen Emerick