Portfolio > Peep Show, Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, FL, 2011

%Peep Show% is a site-specific installation based on research from the book Visions of Eden: Environmentalism, Urban Planning, and City Building in St. Petersburg, FL 1900-1995 by R. Bruce Stephenson.
Peep Show
ceramic, plastic tubing, glass, water, wood, wire- nut connectors, Red Art, acrylic gel medium, red iron oxide
13 1/2 x 8 x 8'
2011

Peep Show is a site-specific installation based on research from the book Visions of Eden: Environmentalism, Urban Planning, and City Building in St. Petersburg, FL 1900-1995 by R. Bruce Stephenson. I combine silkscreened propaganda text from The Evening Independent, a now defunct St. Petersburg newspaper, along with a construction site that the viewer can only access through peepholes in the plywood. The text, written by Lew Brown, asks St. Petersburg residents to, “better get busy and protect your home and your liberty” in order to fight against the master plan that John Nolen had designed to grow the city while preserving its natural beauty. Within the construction site are press molded anti-skid plates, glass vials of water, and orange tubing that connects directly into the ceiling. The architecture is metaphorically sucking the water out of the vials to reference dredge and fill technology. Without a master plan, this technology is reorganizing and destroying the natural landscape of St. Petersburg.