Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes

WawHeadline

Walker Art Center,
February 16 - August 17, 2008

Carnegie Museum of Art,
October 4, 2008 - January 18, 2009

Because suburbia occupies a dominant presence in so many lives—a place of not only residence but also of work, commerce, worship, education, and leisure—it has become a focal point for competing interests and viewpoints. The suburbs have always been a fertile space for imagining both the best and the worst of modern social life. more

Exhibition Photos

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Essays

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All essays are originally from the companion book for this exhibition, Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes. Some essays appear in excerpted form where noted.



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Artists

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Sarah McKenzie

American, b. 1971, Greenwich, Connecticut; lives and works in Boulder, Colorado

Since 2000, Sarah McKenzie has made the construction of new suburban homes the primary subject matter for her paintings. She began the series while living in the Front Range in Colorado, and her early works were aerial views of suburban development transforming farmland on the edges of cities. She moved to Cleveland in 2001 to take a position as a professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art. There her aerial views of suburbia showed the land being blanketed with subdivisions. Gradually, she has shifted away from these views and for the past two years has been working on a series of oil paintings showing partially built suburban homes. Wood-frame construction, houses wrapped in Tyvek, and freshly poured concrete establish the formal structure of McKenzie’s canvases and panels, which are part realism and part geometric abstract. Her keen sense of light and vibrant colors bring out the beauty of their strict geometries and recall American Precisionist painting of the 1920s and 1930s. In her latest paintings, such as Site (2007), the artist delves into “the process of construction itself and, in it, ind[s] a metaphor for the activity of painting.” Thus she hopes to “draw a connection between the construction of a building out of raw materials (lumber, steel, and concrete) and the construction of a painting out of raw materials (paint, canvas, wood).” McKenzie’s work has been shown at institutions such as Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; the University of Akron; Katonah Museum of Art, New York; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, Nebraska; and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado.



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Video

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We asked people to make a video telling us about the suburbs and put it on YouTube. Selected videos are showing in the gallery at the Walker Art Center during the run of the exhibition.

Selected Videos

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Original Submission Call

See YouTube video call

Do you live in a suburb? Do you work or go to school in one? What is your experience of the “burbs? ”…

Whether you love them or hate them we’re interested in your thoughts on the phenomenon of the American suburb. We invite you to make a 5-minute video about strip malls, cul-de-sacs, office parks, and green lawns or whatever suburbia means to you. A select number of videos will be chosen to screen as part of the exhibition Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes in the Target Gallery from February 15 to May 18, 2008.

To participate, upload your video to YouTube and add the tag “walkerworldsaway” or post it as a response to our video above. We’ll feature all videos on the Walker’s YouTube page. To be considered for gallery screening, entries must be 5 minutes or less and be online by January 18, 2008.



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Lexicon

LexiconHeadline
A
Adaptive Reuse
Alligator
Anchor Store
Asphalt Nation
Auto Park
B
Baby Boomer
Ball Pork
BANANA
Bedroom Community
Big Box
Blandburb
Boomburb
Brownfield
Burbed-out
C
Carchitecture
Category Killer
Centaur
Chain Store
Chameleon
Claritas
Cloverleaf
Cluster
Collector Road
Community Interest Development
Compact Land Use
Crunchy Suburb
Cul-de-sac
Cup-holder Cuisine
Curb Appeal
D
Dead Mall
Deeded Community
Discount Department Store
Disneyfication
Drive-thru
Drive Til You Qualify
Drosscape
Duck
E
Edge City
Edifice Rex
Empty Nester
Ethnoburb
Exurb
F
Family Room
Fast Food
Fast Food Cluster
First Ring
Food Court Druid
G
Garage
Garage Band
Garage Mahal
Gated Community
Greenfield
Greenway
Greyfield
Gridlock
Group Attributes
Growth Machine
H
High Density
Home Office
Home Owner Association
HOV Lane
I
Infill
Inner Ring
L
Landfill
Leapfrog
Lifestyle Commuter
Light Rail
Logo Building
Low Density
LULU
M
Mall Rat
McMansion
Media Room
Megaburb
Megachurch
Megasite
Minivan
Mixed-use Development
Monster Home
N
NASCAR Dad
Nerdistan
New Suburbanism
New Urbanism
NIMBY
Node
No Growth
Noise Barrier
Non-place
NORC
NOTE
O
Office Park
Outer-ring Suburb
Outlet Store
Outparcel
Ozoner
P
Park and Ride
Patio Man
Pedestrian-friendly
Peter Pan Suburb
Picture Window
Pod
Pork Chop
Power Center
Privatopia
Property Owner Association
Q
Quality of Life
R
Ranchburger
Re-anchor
Realtor Mom
Recent Changes
Ring Road
Roundabout
S
SLAPP Suit
Slow Growth
Smart Growth
Snout House
Soccer Mom
SOHO
Speed Bump
Sprawl
Sprawl Stress Syndrome
Spread City
Sprinkler City
Starter Castle
Streetcar Suburb
Strip Mall
Subdivision
Suburban Plantation
Superstore
SUV
T
Tank Farm
Technoburb
Telecommute
Terms
Theme Park
Theming
TOAD
Tower Farm
Tract Mansion
Trailer Park
V
Value Retailer
W
Walmartization
Warehouse Club
Weekend Home
Weekend Warrior
White Flight
Wigger
Willow Syndrome
Y
Yea it is That Way
Z
Zillow
Zoomburb


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