34.020990, -118.220904 (Soto Street) Painting

This is an image made of the ground at an abandoned homeless camp off Soto Street in downtown Los Angeles. It's likely the site where a tent once stood, with fabric and sticks pressed into the ground. From the series Trash Paintings Trash Paintings document various “outcroppings” of discarded man-made things lying on the ground, scenes that can be found almost anywhere on earth, but most often get overlooked, ignored or edited out of the landscape. The painting is titled with the exact geo-coordinates where the original photo was made and is searchable on any mapping software to great accuracy. I take a photo of the ground looking straight down. The photo is color separated, burned onto silkscreens, then screen printed by hand with many layers of acrylic and metallic paint. This intensive process reconstitutes a kind of abstracted ghost of the image. Occasionally small editions can be made but generally each painting is unique.