Views of Suburbia (after Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mt. Fuji), exhibited in If We Drew On Eve, The Burren College of Art, Co. Clare, Ireland, 2006

The house and the stump.

The house and the ladder in the night.

The kite and the gravesite.

This is a series of relief prints I made in reference to traditional Japanese color wood-block prints, specifically Hokusai’s famous series, “36 Views of Mount Fuji.”

I started this series while I was studying in Ireland because I noticed that the same kinds of suburban environments were being built there as the ones that I had grown up around in Southern California. “Desperate Housewives” was probably the most popular show in Ireland at the time (if not “The O.C.”). Wood-block prints were basically the television of Hokusai’s time and the typical suburban house is like the Mount Fuji of Western Culture.