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The Sherwin Series (Rejecting Romanticism) by Joelle Dietrick

Posted by Your Art Here
Date July 14th, 2010 to October 20th, 2010
Location Billboard 101, 101 E 6th St., Bloomington, Indiana
Time zone Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Details Sherwin's Balanced Living (Billboard)
2010
Ink jet print on vinyl
10.5 x 24 ft. (3.2 x 7.3 m.)

The Sherwin Series is a group of paintings and prints that remix foreclosed homes and Sherwin Williams 2007 Color Forecast paints. Sherwin Williams chose the colors during the height of the housing bubble before the foreclosure epidemic began. I developed the series of paintings in 2010 with the end of the epidemic not in sight and my own job upheaval as undercurrent.

Color forecasts have always been inextricably linked to commerce and politics. As Greg Castillo explained in his recent talk at Columbia University’s conference, Architecture and the State: 1940s-1970s, color choices of post-war domestic interior walls and appliances sold the American way of life that was not always well-received. For example, a sunshine yellow kitchen came to embody the clash of civilizations between Soviet consumer austerity and Western consumer excess.

Likewise, comments from Cornell West in the film Examined Life question the sustainability of American prosperity, largely built on the backs of others. The subtitle of the series, drawn from West’s explanations, foregrounds the psychological impact of a bubble bursting. West suggest that rather than lamenting paradise lost, we “ride the dissonance.” Designed harmonious color palettes filling fragmented structures mirror this updated approach to beauty.

The paintings’ process, latex on canvas from computer-generated studies, mimics macro to microeconomic shifts. As global trends continue to affect local jobs, contemporary ideas about our relationship to place continue to shift. Reflecting our struggle to maintain identity in the face of tough economic times, the resulting artworks—full of domestic architecture stretching and morphing, adapting to a new era—revisits the American dream to obtain and maintain basic necessities.