(/) THE FLOG AMBIENT USA Visual artist Jake Longstreth conjures effective contemplations from the wilderness to Wal-Mart (/uploads/original/1484320321_93d3.jpg) 1 i 1 "Campus," acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48, 2008. (All painting sizes in inches). Posted Friday, January 13, 2017 10:05 am story by DANIEL A. BROWN (mailto:[email protected]) If there’s a shared poignancy between a fertile and bucolic landscape and the almost-comfortingly familiar lifelessness of a big-box-mega store, Jake Longstreth captures it on the canvas. The magic occurs when he splits the difference. Is a Best Buy parking lot allowed to be as a sacrosanct as a forest? Depending on one’s headspace, both places are either imposing or inviting; or a simultaneous blend of the two. The 39-year-old Longstreth isn't alone in seeing the literal bigger picture of not only what we perceive - but also immortalize. Multimedia arts-guru Ed Ruscha is one artist who opened the parameters of what is fair game within land/city/suburban-scape artworks. “I'm interested in glorifying something that we in the world would say doesn't deserve being glorified,” the now 79-year-old, iconic American artist once explained. “Something that's forgotten, focused on as though it were some sort of sacred object.” Longstreth expresses his own glorification of numinous woodlands and commonplace suburban silence through a mix of sharp, brilliant photorealist images and other works imbued with more abstraction, if not a kind of tonal disintegration. The piece Facade (AMC) (oil on canvas, 24 x 30, 2012) offers us an almost-scientific view of the mundane fascia of a building. Upon further viewing, the static mood of the piece seems to become energized as the yellow color of the structure pulsates into a kind of yellow-blue mist on the horizon. In Longstreth’s work, the power is in the subtleties and the patient viewer is rewarded as the facets and details deepen and reveal themselves. Longstreth’s upcoming exhibit at Flagler College’s Crisp-Ellert Art Museum (CEAM), entitled Pastures and Parking Lots: Outtakes and Other Rarities, 2003-2016, features 25 oil and acrylic paintings that are spread over two rooms in the gallery space; one room is primarily pictures of corporate franchise architecture; the other, landscape. The pieces a drawn from a “non-place of American capitalism,” including video stores, big-box retailers, parking lots, and the Southern Californian landscape. Longstreth gives a talk at 4 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13 at the college’s “Jay’s Place” of the Ringhaver Student Center; the opening reception follows at CEAM from 5-7 p.m. The exhibit is on display through Feb. 25. Folio Weekly sent the California-based Longstreth a shortlist of questions via email. He was kind enough to give us some info on his work and this new exhibit. Folio Weekly: If pressed, how would you describe your art? Jake Longstreth: Landscape work that is informed by our current economic and social reality. I see a kind of interesting compositional disparity in some of the paintings. Campus has a really precise and impressive appearance of photorealism. Conversely, Corridor seems to touch more on the dissipation of form, and then Naples Common fuses the difference, blending the real and the abstract. Is this a deliberate, kind of divergent approach that you take or is it more intuitive? When you make a lot of paintings, over a lot of years, you tend to try out different approaches— this show features work made over a 13-year period, so there is quite a bit of variation within that time span. But a surprising continuity too. In particular, you draw imagery from what could otherwise be considered arid, or even lifeless, places like video stores, fast casual dining establishments, big box retailers, and parking lots. What is your attraction to those particular places and environments? They are ubiquitous and make up a big part of our social and economic landscape. They’re important for that reason. The struggle is to figure out how to make paintings of those kinds of places that are both truthful and beautiful. A prominent use of negative and background space is present in much of your work. It seems to add a sense of immensity and even a quiet, almost haunted feel. Over the years, has adding that sense of openness and space become more crucial in your compositions or has it always been in play? I feel like it’s always been in play. I arrive at my compositions intuitively. Painters are trying to show the world as they see it. It often happens that I’ll be passing through a parking lot or some place like that and remark “God, look at the light right now!” And whomever I’m with will look with confusion at whatever I’m pointing out. I think that’s a big reason I paint. Your younger brother David is a member of the Dirty Projectors, and you’ve sat in with Dirty Projectors and Vampire Weekend. Have you created any works or installations that merge your visual arts and music skills? No — my art is a separate thing from the music projects I’ve been involved in. I’ve been in a ton of bands over the last 20 years. I love playing music with friends, but it’s a totally different set of priorities and strengths than visual art. You gotta keep ‘em separated :) What do you have on deck for 2017? Next thing on tap is a solo booth at the Dallas Art Fair in April with Gregory Lind Gallery of San Francisco. And further things with ltd Los Angeles as well. 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