Southern California is known for its complicated drives from one point to another. You take the 405 to the 605, to the 5, to the 101 … it’s a reality of life; it’s a SNL comedy sketch; it’s a metaphor for journeys real and mythic. As I pondered my newest group of artworks, I knew I was fusing two separate aesthetics.

I started by using highly decorative linear shapes cut from vintage framing material. These frames connected together much like freeways, with their own interchanges and transitions. To distinguish them in the studio, I gave them temporary names like “The 10 to the 210 to the…” and then I started combining them with modernist geometric shapes and color.

This interchange, this fusion of directions seemed an apt metaphor for the reality of people and ideas always moving from one location to the next. Functional and rather mundane, these transit interchanges literally became a humorous way for me to begin these hybrid constructions.