Title
Creation Date
2014
Preview
Medium
inkjet print
Description
Dimensions: composed of 12 items, 39" x 59"
Rights
© Kathryn Nicole Nelson, 2014. Photo credit: Kathryn Nicole Nelson.
Keywords
urban development, urban planning, gentrification, environmental portrait
Artist Statement
When I moved to Idaho from the Northeast, the landscape was not the only thing that was different. I was surrounded by an overwhelming number of subdivisions that littered the city around me. This was a very different experience for me coming from a rural part of Western Massachusetts. There, I grew up in the woods in a house that my parents designed with not much around, including other homes. From that time forward subdivisions have both fascinated and disturbed me.
This project explores how the “cookie-cutter” house has become the norm and how many, including myself (for the time being), have succumbed to its impersonal, although often convenient ideas. It also takes a look at what creates a home, and how one customizes their surroundings to make it their own.
Manufactured was created so the viewer could take a typological look, through photographs, at the exteriors of newer houses. These houses are located in different subdivisions and together show the uncanny similarities between them. With the idea of the subdivision come covenants and standards that homeowners have to follow for fear of penalty. This brings into question the real ownership of the exterior and land of one’s house. The plans that accompany these photographs show the few options that are allowed when building this kind of house.
Built explores the ideas of the personal features and individuality found within a home. It shows how people express their character and captures a portrait of them through their belongings. Often the only ones who see these spaces are friends and family, those with more intimate relationships to the individual. The blueprints that are a part of this piece are that of my childhood home. These plans represent the individuality of designing and building one’s own home and the freedom that comes with it.
A house is a space that comes in many forms, some manufactured some built. It is ultimately made into a home when we impose ourselves onto it.