‘There Goes the Neighborhood 1950-2050’

Segregation in baby-spouting suburban communities was a fact of life in post-war America. ‘There goes the neighborhood’, a familiar phrase invoked when the first dark-skinned family moved into an all-white area, expressed the fear that falling house values, rising crime, and general decline would inevitably follow.

The pastel perfection of the 1950’s neighborhood in ‘There Goes the Neighborhood 1950-2050’ is disrupted by the presence of a chocolate brown house, as well as brown babies around it. Changing demographics and social norms predict a new version of ‘there goes the neighborhood’. Historically, white people moving in to an established neighborhood of color suggested the beginning of a gentrification process. By 2050, could the white family moving in signal the decline of the area, and consequently be cause for alarm? Or will a more tolerant attitude prevail toward the newly minority white population?

The houses in ‘There Goes the Neighborhood 1950-2050’ are made of tinted slip-cast porcelain. Porcelain, with its translucent, luminous surface, has long been associated with the human skin. The timeworn conceit comparing a woman’s complexion to porcelain comes to mind, as does the material’s historical use as a doll-making medium. The houses themselves are my abstractions of suburban homes found throughout America.

‘There Goes the Neighborhood 1950-2050’ extends the porcelain-as-skin convention to the house form. In my decades of designing custom homes in the LA area, I have been struck by the profound identification many people have with their houses. To me, the house truly is the outermost layer, or skin, of its inhabitants. It protects, contains, and identifies us in much the same way that our skin does. This concept also aligns with spiritual traditions in which building metaphors are applied to the physical body (e.g. the body as a temple housing the spirit).

The houses in the 1950’s section of ‘There Goes the Neighborhood 1950-2050’ are tinted in pastel tones associated with this romanticized era of pink-cheeked nuclear families and prosperity. The houses in the 2050 section are cast in a range of darker skin tones, representing the new majority and feared ‘other’ of the earlier community.

The low ground plane of ‘There Goes the Neighborhood 1950-2050’ gives the viewer a drone’s-eye view of the neighborhood. The two sections comprise an imagined suburb treated as a quilt, reinforcing its identity as a domestic realm. Patch-worked tinted paper with traditional embroidery patterns imprinted on the segments is collaged onto clear acrylic. (These patterns were once used to decorate pillowcases and tablecloths, an acceptable creative outlet for housewives.) LED point lights shining from below the surface evoke streetlights and reinforce the toy-like quality of the piece, reminiscent of a train set found under the Christmas tree. Babies, the reason d’etre of the suburbs, are sprinkled over the surface, completing the picture.

Media: Slip-cast Porcelain, LED Lights, Paper, Acrylic, Wood     Dimensions: 24″ x 49″ x 8′-6″     Date: 2012-2014