Metrovolution
Your Eyes: What Do You See?
What’s the first thing you notice about Metrovolution, and how does your eye travel across the composition?
What emotions arise as you spend more time with the Metrovolution?
What patterns or structures reveal themselves to you?
Does the city depicted in Metrovolution feel familiar or does it give you a sense of déjà vu?
If this moment were part of a story, what would be unfolding right now?
What sounds or soundtrack might accompany Metrovolution?
Please share your insights.
My Eye: Behind the Image
What I Saw and How It All Came Together
This series began with a close-up image of a skylight window screen caught in a winter storm. Ice clinging to the mesh reminded me of windows in a building. As the ice changed to rain, the “city” morphed, so I took numerous shots over a two-hour period before the last traces were gone.
When I began editing the screen image, I intended to create a set of separate abstract images that differed in tone and detail. But I soon found myself digitally sculpting a growing city and realized that the process itself was evolutionary—no “metrovolutionary”—and it needed a visual conclusion, a “there.”
To that end, I blended in a photograph of the New York skyline taken from a train window and later layered in an image of the full moon captured during a hike to Utah’s Alstrom Point, which overlooks Lake Powell. (Mind-bending experience to watch the moon vault into the sky.)
After completing the final version of Metrovolution, it struck me that I’d depicted time moving vertically, from the inchoate to the constructed. So, I asked myself, why not do editions representing time moving sideways through the annual cycle as well? That led to creating other versions, one for each season, with appropriate tones and elements in the sky.
At its core, Metrovolution is about transformation, the way a city grows in space and in the imagination.
The Physical Metrovolution Art: Dye sublimation print on mid-gloss aluminum
Gear Used: Nikon D850 + Micro-NIKKOR 200mm f/4
The Eye of the Machine
I asked ChatGPT to explain this image, and here’s what it came up with:
Structure derives from scattered information:
differences define edges
edges form shapes
shapes align into patterns
patterns establish structure
What begins as noise stabilizes into structure.
Reflection
I think the machine’s explanation is an apropos way to describe the progression of the image from the inchoate to the articulated skyline. It’s also a useful lens for interpreting all kinds of processes. I’ll definitely incorporate it into my future discussions with studio visitors to my studio who view Metrovolution.
If you missed my launch post, click here
And here’s my second post:
I see the buildings frst. Then my eyes travel to the sky. Not sure if it's twilight and night. The moon anchors everything for me.
This image feels like one of my Strati paintings, layers of time, memory, and structure merging into one breath. The city dissolves like sediment, revealing the quiet pulse beneath the surface where light and shadow become one language.