Day 129: Karolina Sussland

My parents had a choice of countries when they were planning our escape, Australia or the United States due to the distribution of relatives that had gotten out of (what was) Czechoslovakia before the borders closed. My aunt that lived in Phoenix used to send my parents Arizona Highways magazines and that helped my parents decide on coming here. The supersaturated photos of sunsets put forth by Arizona Highways magazine (circa late 1970s) represent the utopian American dream. I'm drawn to this pretense of perfection. Originally I replaced the foreground with interference gold, the most commercial color in existence and the background with white, the color used for purity. As the series continued I started using other people’s nature photos across the United States, removing the sky, and replacing it with a cloudy sunset sky in graphite. Still thinking about the American Dream only broadening the scope of imagery from AZ to the entire US. I’m using other people’s photos because the image can’t come from me, it can’t be real to me. In this series I’m only drawing the sunset clouds in graphite with no land at all. The clouds are all based on a cloud google image search because like the landscapes the cloud references can’t come from me. I wanted to do something specific within the container so I’m making it into a container of the American dream the sunset sky part, the part that started as white representing purity.

There’s something about how delicate the graphite is.

sussland.com

KAROLINA SUSSLAND/CLOUDS, PHICA