La Esquina Gallery-- Part IIdigital printdigital printdigital printdigital printdigital print

















Two Sides of the Same Tracks Part I 2004
'78 Cadillac front end, dual video projections, dual audio, Oldsmobile Cutlass car seats, paint
Town Topic--19th and Baltimore Kansas City, Missouri

Two Sides of the Same Tracks Part II 2008
Tires, wooden poles, Nike high tops, dual audio and video projection, rear view mirrors, aircraft cable, Kansas City maps, rotating turntable
La Esquina Gallery--Locate/Navigate Group Exhibition--Kansas City, Missouri

FlatFiles digital prints 2008
KCAI Artspace--Kansas City, Missouri 

How do we define our environment?  How do we choose our surroundings?

This piece reflects on a specific experience I had as an Americorp Vista volunteer.  Daily I made the drive transitioning from my neighborhood in South Kansas City in the older section of Leawood to the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas at the Quindaro School.  The Quindaro area is where my mother grew up.  The transition took place as I crossed on the Roe 18th Street expressway over the industrial rail yards below--in a sense “going over to the other side of the tracks”.  Both environments are projected for you here.  Out of the driver’s windshield perspective is the area of Kansas City, Kansas including the Quindaro area where I spent my days.  In the passenger’s windshield perspective the area of South Kansas City is depicted including parts of Leawood, Prairie Village, and Overland Park.  I simply wanted to provide for the viewer a contrast of these two geographically close communities from our metro area.  As a literacy recruiter, I was in charge of finding volunteers from my part of town to volunteer.  These individuals would give their time to work one on one with elementary aged children of Quindaro school work on their readings skills.  Unfortunately, when some interested individuals reached me for information about volunteering, the prospect dissolved when geography entered the equation.

While driving this route on a daily basis, I began to reflect on how I observe my environment as I drive.  Driving is large part of our life as Kansas Citians.  There are times when we all just speed by and take very little notice of our environment.  At other times when the environment is unfamiliar, we take notice of the streets, buildings, the people, and other cars around us.  Do we place geographical limits on where we go in our metro?  If so why?  Our metro is made of many different communities.  One community of people would not exist with out the other. In my experiences of Quindaro, I learned a great deal from people that were seemingly different than myself.  In reality, we had much in common.  I was honored to share company with some of the most genuine people I have ever known.  The experience made me more of a complete person with a greater and broader perspective.

I have chosen to metaphorically place these two geographical extremes into a diagram of science which reflects on how we process information through our both of our eyes to both hemispheres of our brain.  The geography of our left and right hemispheres specialize in different kinds of processing.  We truely can not function fully without them both.  Our metro is made up of many communities in which each group depends on the other for their identity.  The hope is that we can better understand each other through exchanges of culture much like our two distinctive hemispheres communicate with each other helping us successfully function.  Is there a way that each of us can crossover socially/culturally in our daily experience of our vastily diverse metro area here in Kansas City?

I have appropriated the use of a ‘78 cadillac front end.  A new cadillac is associated with having a certain type of socio-economic status.  After many years of use the same cadillac can become recycled for a diiferent socio-economic status.  This functional object of transportation becomes redeemed.