Floating Wild West

Created in Blender.

Created all parts of everything in scenes.

I grew up in Southern California, and my family often drove through the desert to Las Vegas. Along that drive were wide expanses of nothingness, abandoned buildings, truck stops with run down cafes, and shiny and elaborate signs advertising anything you can think of. Here, I have a kind of mash up of present day/ future desert town, mixed with the aesthetics and ideas of the Old West. I wanted my work to convey expansiveness and loneliness, but also the beauty and stillness and contentedness that I always experience when I think about, or look at images of deserts. There is a softness of light that gives the impression of silence, but heightens awareness of the surroundings. I used a mix of Old West facades, materials, and silhouettes, mixed with clean, straight lines and more modern materials. The style of the saloon window detail on the first floor windows came from a reference photo from the early 1900s. I took a lot of inspiration of brutalist architecture, but still used wood planking, and the idea of facades to make the buildings really noticeable in the back. The town is small and blends with its surroundings, a sort of oasis, a hazy mirage in the desert. Simple, quiet, beautiful.