Land of the Vanishing Sky Series

Melissa Gorman

Brooklyn is where I was born. Though my parents – both Brooklyn bred – chose the lawns of Jersey in the seventies, I still feel at home in Brooklyn like nowhere else.

Mainly because it inspires – the people, the vibe, and of course, the buildings. Not that the borough is a hub of architectural marvels. There’s plenty of the dilapidated, the questionable, the ugly. But never before was there the skyscraper. Until now.

The tall buildings have come, and I first attempted to document the change in Brooklyn’s landscape through photographs, trying somehow to capture, in a tangible form, my feelings about the radical shift in scale and the disruption to my community.

But the pictures I took weren’t personal enough – I needed to portray the scenes in a way that better illustrated the layers of my emotions. My response was to begin a collection of drawings: Land of the Vanishing Sky.

The first set of the series depicts Williamsburg, a place where I lived and worked for 10 years. Most recently I inhabited the neighborhood at a studio on North 3rd Street, where I’ve had a front-row seat to a frenzy of construction and demolition.

Seeing much-loved landmarks such as the Old Dutch Mustard building demolished to make way for a new condo and watching empty lots count their days to extinction has made me feel privy to a unique transitional phase in the city’s history. Much like those born before the prevalent use of the computer are links to a different era, we who are witnessing this development unfold will be the last bridge to the old Brooklyn, and I feel compelled to preserve it.

Making these drawings allows me to capture moments that exist somewhere between the reality of now and my memories of the recent past. I plan to continue creating small works on paper that confront the eminent change Brooklyn faces, with subsequent sets examining Downtown, Red Hook and other neighborhoods in the borough that have special meaning for me.

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