chrismcassidy
You Are Here resulted from a commission from the University at Albany for a permanent indoor artwork for a new commons building. I imagined the piece as a surface of tangency between this particular built interior and its specific location. Thinking as usual of the landscape as a map, I recalled driving several years earlier through the Rio Chama Valley in New Mexico. As we exited a narrow canyon the walls fell away to reveal the high tablelands spread out before us, with all of the nuances of the topography plain to see. That image came back to me as I thought about ways to make the brick walls of the interior space speak of the surrounding countryside, vast but unseen, obscured by physical and mental barriers. The viewer, instead of confronting a flat and opaque wall, would see an imaginary hawk’s eye view, with the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers wearing grooves in the bricks, while the valley’s sides buckle into hills and mountains.
chrismcassidy 
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