A hardscrabble, lifeless urbanity is relieved by a foreground landscape in which two young boys appear to be in their own thoughts as they walk in-step in a single file.
“The Sacred and the Profane” are demonstrated with the glory and serenity of the temple glowing in the setting sun. The Temple’s “sacredness” is framed with materialist “profanity” of festive lights and pleasure boats in the harbor.
French culture features oversized bread loaves and a poetic quality of its language, here displayed with added mystique in a sign reflected backward from a store across the street
A fire hydrant enclosure provides an out-of-sight context for a nastily scripted political statement on public property, perhaps yearning for a hasty deportation before it’s removed.
Rain spots on dirty glass dramatize the foreground of translucent plant life, glowing though a reflection of pink behind the viewer. The blurry exterior stair contributes a grounded structure to complement the flourish of the plants.
The rough texture and curved transoms are mimicked by a nostalgic old truck with its curved wheel and fenders, conveying motion. The rusty fire escape directs attention to the truck, soon to be driven off, leaving a void in the scene.
Industrial materials combine into and eroded facade with a vent no longer relentlessly functioning having succumbed to wind and rain. Flimsy pipes cross diagonally, disregarding the remaining dignity of the wood window and brick grid.
The purity of diagonal marble patterns on the campanile are recalled in the diagonal patterns on the white blouse. The flowing sign script echoes the curving gothic arches above.
The pale blue window shade is a tranquil setting for a modest hand-written message to visitors, contrasted with the deep brown fortress-like frame. Authoritative stamp-pad letters were subsequently added to convey urgency.
Buried in winter fog and snow, a weathered shed with faded multi-colored boards displays rusty multicolored license plates and hubcaps – vestiges of bygone travel – and a cheerfully crafted horse from an earlier era of travel.
Texture is on display in these eroded façades perched over the Mississippi River, about to collapse. For years, the walls have been falling apart – brick-by-brick and stone-by-stone. Newer stones were stacked somehow in the window cavities.
A neon martini glass offers an invitation of civilized glamour inside the hotel, while outside is a derelict town washed-out from torrential rainstorms dripping off rusty metal roofs, and flooding down the gravel road, dissuading potential visitors.
Is the gigantic sign an effective form of persuasion, in light of the evidence below that all Italians surely have one – or is it a neon declaration of national chest-beating?
Wendt 