Brooks Salzwedel
Region: Pacific Coast
These works are delicate and subtle landscapes reflecting the friction between urban development and nature. I use a process of layering, including semi-transparent tape and resin, to give the pieces an atmospheric quality. I play with scale enough to be noticed at second or third glance, but not so much that the work becomes about differences in size. My most recent series focuses on turn-of-the-century bridges (1890–1914), many in mid-construction. They capture a moment, as if civilization had suddenly abandoned cities to leave behind decrepit bridges now overgrown with foliage and old trees. Some of the structures are misplaced in their setting: a Southern California bridge sits amid fog in a Northern California mountain range, the base of a Scottish bridge lies unmanned in snow-covered hills. I want these semi-fictitious places to feel faraway, cold, and polluted, yet I want the viewer to feel an intimate connection to them.