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CITYSCAPES
Ellen Irvine, March 2, 1981
Ellen Irvine, March 2, 1981
The city is a hard-edged, hard-surfaced place where soft-bodied people live and work. It has its own signs and symbols which one must learn to read in order to get by. Colors and
shapes have specific meanings.
This show is about the juxtaposition of people who live in the city with the hard environment.
The architecture of the city, meant to impress us, looms and intimidates the city dweller until its monumentality becomes just landmarks and the scale curiously convoluted, the hardness becomes a practical tool.
The people I chose as representatives are senior citizens, (a group distinctly different from bums and vagrants, shop-keepers and office people). They live on fixed incomes, inexpensively, with conveniences and entertainment in a limited radius to maintain their independence. They travel on foot, by bus or taxi. They give the city a grandmother and grandfather sort of quality. They band together for company and protection. They are a gentle side of the city. Their portraits are made to put them in the correct urban scale. The size makes sense in relation to skyscrapers.
The installation is about the environment, taken from my "hit and run street works" done downtown....like parking spaces on the walls, sharp-edged--yellow tells you where to go, red says no.They blend into the cityscape almost as obscurely as the inhabitants.
Wall Locations: parking lot, 6th & F Sts., Feb. 15, 1981 parking lot, 6th & G Sts., November, 1980parking lot, 6th betw. G & Market, Feb. 15, 1981, downtown San Diego, CA.