Artist Profile: Steve West

Steve West photographs the secret history of the city – sites of clandestine meetings and illicit art installations. The images are lithographs, reproduced through a painstakingly manual process. Slight variances accumulate to create a rich layer of historical information via artifacts of the printing process. The coarse grain of the images complements the subject’s rough surfaces and sharp contours. Gates and fences unfurl across the picture frame, diamond patterns of chain link block access and obscure views of the space beyond.  These are stories of streets covered with dirt and silt and neglect, the city of forgotten spaces. A crimson patina of corroding iron punctuates grey streets – time weighs heavily in these images, it is a physical presence measured in weathered posters and broken pottery. Half exposed cobblestones and abandoned rail tracks that once carried the weight of the city emerge from the dirt of urban archaeology as notes from the past. This metropolis is a slumbering creature whispering its stories to those who look and listen.

REVS and Bolt__3.5 “REVS and Bolt 1” Pronto Plate Lithograph EV 1/21/2015

Graveyard & Fence Detail III_3.5 “Graveyard & Fence detail III” Pronto Plate Lithograph EV 2/26/2015

Anatomy and Boy_3.5 “Anatomy and Basin” Silkscreen 18” x 24” Street Action New York, NY 1992

Rubble III-III_3.5 “Rubble III-III” Pronto Plate Lithograph EV 11/21/2014

REVS and Rubble II-II_3.5 “REVS and Rubble II-II” Pronto Plate Lithograph EV 1/21/2015

Rubble V - IX_3.5 “Rubble V-IX” Pronto Plate Lithograph EV 10/11/2014

http://www.artplusaddiction.com/