20/20 Vision, Second Edition

The Art of Contemporary University Printmaking

Sean P. Morrissey

Growing up and living in rural Middle America, I have always been in the path of urban centers and suburbs expanding. The architecture has become a barrier of housing subdivisions, fast food chains and strip malls. I have always been surrounded.

What we know as the contemporary American landscape has become a blur of buildings and colors. Today it is a place where expansion and construction have become constants—always visible, always changing. The fluctuation and evolution of the developing landscape found at the fringe of communities is where I am most interested.

My current work deals with the continuous geographic transformation of today’s landscape, utilizing reoccurring architectural elements and construction imagery that I find throughout our environment. Piles of these are created which stretch outward into space to suggest overgrowth and the overtaking of land. Interests in geography, architecture, cartography and zoning are constant themes in the work. I use the clean, slick colors of advertising and the barren façades of modern buildings to remove any attachment or memory to the original.