My recent studio visit with Carrie Rubinstein was nothing
short of pleasant. Her live /work space was very tranquil. A contrast to the
sounds and sights of her Prospect Park neighborhood which bursts with such liveliness and
activity which seemed to be no distraction for her as she works intimately with
each of her series of drawings of architectural rooftops of dwellings amongst
plants and city lights.
As I walked in Carrie’s colorfully detailed line drawings
drew me into looking closer and examining her surroundings. I wished I was in
each of these somewhat imaginary spaces. As Carrie told me her techniques of
working I was even more intrigued at her ability to capture such detail and
attention to her subject matter from just pure observation from quite a
distance away. One would think she climbed her rooftop and used binoculars to draw such angles of an adjacent rooftop. I was quite surprised that by
working and drawing from her windowsill she was able to capture such detail and
intricate spaces much higher than her eye level. Imagination must have come
into play which she explained took her about three weeks to complete each ink
and gouache drawing.
Having known Carrie since graduate school at Hunter College back in
2004 her work has changed quite a bit since she studied sculpture and used more
random materials from wood to cast rubber. Her thesis work which contained life
sized gouache drawings of a living room was cut up and arranged into an
installation, which she described as 2.5 D (a halfway point between 2D and 3D)
remained with me and I related them to her current work by the line quality and
her drawing from life. I challenged her to work this way again, not to abandon
her older gouache techniques or recent way of working small scale and intimate
but to incorporate her previous 2.5 D methods. I understood her space
limitations to create a whole large scale installation of these so I told her
to imagine life sized fragments of her recent drawings which contained brick walls,
rooftops, plants, trees and to consider the viewers' own entrance into these
environments. A nice surprise would be to see where these borderline imaginary/ realistic spaces emerge. From life, to drawing, to life again- a small drawing is magnified.
I can’t wait to walk into the colorful world of Carrie Rubinstein.
