Evan Lockhart Borman was born and raised in a suburban sprawl in the northwest Denver metro area. Surrounded by tract houses and strip malls he was forced to make his own way armed only with his wits, a skateboard, and paint pen. It was a war against the mundane homogenous existence of modern living.
ARTIST STATEMENT
To understand the past: The art is informed by that a regional vernacular, that of the American West. Not the west of horses, sweeping prairies, and spectacular vistas; the west of poor planning and land usage. I grew up in a town founded in the depths of a Cold War, its citizens gripped by international paranoia and in search of an unattainable utopia. The town is now filled with decrepit structures standing as a reminder of the mistrust, confusion that stood side by side with the idealism of the era. Those values are ever-present in the now. Do they romanticize these towers as symbols of the good old days? I pay homage to this misguided history with a playful ode to the structures that survive through reproducing a simplified form of deeply contrasting blacks and whites. I juxtaposed the strength, longevity, and weight of the subject matter with light, fragile, temporary materials.
Research involves the idea of the Zombie. Not as a bloodthirsty dead cannibal, but as a result of the paranoia and confusion in contemporary society. They wander in search of meaning like we do, living in a setting that is everywhere and nowhere wearing our same costumes, carrying our same implements even with not knowing how or what they are. They are merely something acting outside the province of intention. My work research means to explore inefficiency and probe its societal causes and effects: begging the question: where did we go wrong?