Driving Directions For Five Ornamental Surfaces, as installed here, is about twenty feet wide. The colorful 'maps' are acrylic paint on hot press Arches watercolor paper. The thinly striped areas of each image are fabric samples showing through cut-out sections of the paper. The maps are connected to the wall using disc magnets and nails. The wall was already black; my linework is just acrylic paint on the wall itself.

Each image is based on a photograph from a pharmaceutical advertisement, depicting the "after" effect of a mood-enhancing drug on a theoretical consumer. I've become fascinated by these images because they claim to depict an idealized reality: each model is presumed to be happier, more stable, more able to concentrate, or more energetic. Driving Directions was inspired by the desire to push these photographs further into the territory of maps in an attempt to make the images cough up their manipulative ambitions for the consumer (the audience). The works on paper are irregularly cut to further suggest their presence as road or land maps. Each image is color-mapped to its respective fabric sample.

The square at lower right is a "legend" that connects to each of the five images by replicating its respective fabric sample. The legend features simple icons, creating a relationship between the images and the icons. For example, the man/map at lower left is connected to a tie and the woman to a ring. The superficial connections are obvious, but intended to further strip the (once) photographic representations of any sincerity... can we take back what an ad robs us of?