and now . . . 
long ago when my son was very young he spent many days creating what he called “set-ups”. intricate miniature worlds complete with houses and streets and railways that took days to create and filled the floor of our family room. these worlds were peopled with playmobil "mens" as he called them (regardless of gender), and vehicles of all types and sizes moved along the streets on their business. he would sometimes lie down on his tummy and just stare at carpet-level across the expanse of his creation, imagining all the lives being lived in his imaginary world.
artist scott teplin’s alphaville show is on now at the teplin’s drawings remind me of nothing so much as “where’s waldo” without the millions of tiny little people. i love squinting at all the tiny details and especially at the intersecting and bisecting roadways that disappear under bridges and behind walls. in this way they remind me of the lovely intricacies of my son’s imaginary cities.
here’s an excerpt from the description for the show:
“the visitor to this exhibition becomes a present-day undercover detective lemmy caution, the protagonist of jean luc godard’s 1965 film, alphaville, for which the show is titled. teplin has filtered the city of alphaville through his own imagination and drawn a world devoid of people - only evidence of their domestic and work environments remain for exploration. teplin's recreated alphaville takes place in the present, where computers are not much more than an occasional laptop on a table and a few rooms set up for surveillance of other rooms in secret.”
scott’s website has a lovely gallery of the alphaville drawings as well as his alphabet, brick pipe book and sinker book series.
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