Zonestraal Diffusion Drawings

This series uses images; both taken and found during a visit to the Zonnestraal Sanatorium in the Netherlands, a tuberculosis sanatorium from the 1920s that is currently awaiting UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites list. Two of the buildings have been restored to their original grandeur, others are slowly decaying. My guide was the son of a former patient who spear headed the various renovations and landmark approvals. He was able to personally describe life at Zonnestraal, lending a human view of how well the design of this machine-like structure effected both mental and physical healing.

After 20 years of collecting envelopes with safety paper interiors, I began making my own drawing papers from these patterns. The interiors of the torn-open envelopes (letters sent to me, both of a business and personal nature) are printed onto vellum and then I draw and paint architectural spaces on the unprinted side. The safety paper pattern becomes a simultaneous symbol of protection and decay when laid behind the definitive and aspirational lines of early modernism. 

(All work donated to Momenta Art’s 2013 Winter Fete art mystery bags)

Additional images published in Rx Art’s Between the Lines: A Coloring Book by Contemporary Artists, Volume 5