I’m driving around in the sweltering heat on a June afternoon. The acrid smell of rotting garbage and the thick exhaust from a bus plastered in injury attorney ads floods my nose. Someone is screaming in the distance. To the North there is smoke. The mountains are on fire and the dry wind is propelling the billowing smoke high up into the sky, filtering the sunlight into an orange glow.
There’s a pothole filled with black liquid in the crumbling pavement. Weeds are shooting up through the cracks along the curb. I notice a cracked and faded styrofoam cup in a bush against a rusty fence along with some other mystery litter. A mesquite sapling has forced its way through the chain links and waits to puncture anyone who gets too close.
A new luxury apartment complex being built in an empty lot next to a seedy motel. The symphony of beeping construction equipment is drowned out by a Dodge Charger barreling down the road. The landscape is ever changing.
This work celebrates the banalities of everyday life in the urban desert. Ignored perspectives overlooked by passersby have a unique allure that is waiting to be observed by the right set of eyes. This is the modern unidealized West.
S. Jordan Palmer resides in Tucson, Arizona.
For commissions or general inquiries contact me.