Benjamin EdwardsImmersion, 2004 Learning From Las Vegas meets The Matrix on the enormous, colorful surface of Edwards' 75-by-125-inch canvas. The Washington, D.C., artist collages images of suburbia, technology, and the brand economy into a seductive yet disturbing vision of contemporary life. Watch an animation of the making of Immersion on Edwards' website, benjaminedwards.net.
Brian UlrichChicago, IL, from the seriesCopia/Retail, 2003 Ulrich, a Chicago-based artist, began photographing big-box retail and thrift stores as a response to President George W. Bush's post-9/11 call for Americans to shop and thereby boost the national economy.
Paho MannRe-inhabited Circle K's (Phoenix), 2004-2006 Over the past two decades, hundreds of Circle K convenience stores have been converted to new purposes, from tuxedo rentals to tattoo parlors. Mann, who lives in Texas, documents the buildings' strange fates in photographs and on a website, circlekmap.pahomann.net.
Jessica SmithTrash Day, 2007 Textile designer Smith sends up a weekly suburban ritual in Trash Day, a silk fabric based on 18th century toile de Jouy prints. Other patterns from her company, Domestic Element, satirically appropriate such icons of suburbia as Levittown, freeway interchanges, and the Hummer.
Laura Migliorino Egret Street, 2006 Migliorino, a Minneapolis based artist, confounds the stereotype of suburbanites as white families with a mom, dad, and 2.5 kids. Her portraits of subdivision residents position people of all sorts in front of their own homes and against a superimposed backdrop of the larger neighborhood.
