56th Street Night Drawing

The images of dark, wet, empty nighttime urban streets are haunting, populated by power lines and the harsh light of an uncovered street lamp. However, the canvas that German artist Lena Schmidt uses are pieces of found wood, which she works on with marker and knifes to come up with her cityscapes"”all of that eerie light, the brick facades, the watery streets are created by drawing and scraping, all in tones of off-white and black. Schmidt calls her artworks urbanscapes"”they refer to places that generate themselves from nonplaces, she says, from the transit zones of the city, traffic interchanges, road systems, crossroads and deserted old industrial brick buildings.