Builder (2004)

Summer, artist Madeleine Hatz is busy building a fragmentary wall by randomly attaching bricks to the window-wall of her 140 square meter studio. Wearing orange work pants and yellow gloves, she sits in the middle of a sort of architectural landscape, composed of blue orange piles of rubble. The studio is located in a small riverside area near the Manhattan Bridge on the Brooklyn side of the east river. It's narrow streets, warehouse buildings, and the Manhattan Bridge creates a unique image. In the studio, two huge windows act like a pair of eyes watching Manhattan. The handmade bricks are painted in florescent orange and earth tones; the mortar tinted in cyan blue and turquoise green. The rambling brickwork forms a panoramic vista of the city that reflects the scale of both the near and far view.