The Vermonter birdhouse by Jason Sargenti, 2020 USA

About the Item

Handmade architectural birdhouse by Jason Sargenti, hand-signed dated, USA 2020. "As the cultural epicenter of my region (NYC) hemorrhage its moneyed populace, they venture north to gobble up real estate and bend towns to their will. As out of place and oblivious as Tim Burton's cast of exurbs from Beetlejuice." J. Sargenti Made of a birdhouse and painted wood. 8” x 5 3/4” x 6” The Vermonter birdhouse pays hommage to Tim Burton’s movie Beetlejuice. This birdhouse is Jason Sargenti's mind-image of the house where the movie takes place — a house famous for being decorated with unafraid Pomo taste, boasting radical design classics paired with outrageous aggressive sculptures that are now icons of pop culture and design. The incredible sets of the movie were designed by Bo Welch. The movie’s house borrows from Stanley Tigerman, Robert Venturi and Frank Gehry’s early architectural works, symbolizing the new, outrageous money of bourgeois Bohème New Yorkers moving to the country to disfigure the local traditional homes into avant-garde facades perceived as intrusive, cold and lifeless by the locals and people in general. Sargenti was inspired by the parody of the wealthy real estate rush in his native Vermont state where new money levels the local landscape like a bulldozer. We can read here a very interesting dynamic in Sargenti’s work, which is characteristic of post-modernism and is a classic artist dilemma too: being true to the tradition and history, but also being able to overcome the rules until they break and free new energies into the world, into the cycle of life and death. Part of the exhibition "The Architect's Birdhouses" by Jason Sargenti at PHX Gallery, Aug 31 to Sept 13 2023. "The motivation for making these birdhouses came from a desire to provide some contrast in my surroundings. Initially, I would purchase ugly birdhouses and renovate them. My plan included distributing them to open fields around my rural Upstate NY community, to provide homes for songbirds. Eventually those were all either stolen or used as target practice by the locales. The proceeding iterations, made during quarantine, were less for distribution to a hostile community and more to maintain my own sanity. The resulting constructions are fantasies, speculations and inspiration that continue a discourse in speculative design." J Sargenti Jason Sargenti is a New York State-licensed architect with a body of built work in the private and public sectors, an experienced university educator, and an expert generalist with a skills base in project management, building technology, historic masonry restoration, site planning, and sustainable design. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and a Master of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. "My formative years were split between New York City and Florida in the 1980s and '90s. On weekends during the school year, my mother would drag me around South Florida, documenting the beach homes of money launderers and narcotics importers for a popular design magazine. During the summer, I would follow my cooler older brother around SoHo as he delivered "fashion" to celebrity photo shoots. Like many who create things, I attended design school, where I was told my colorful creations were unrelatable and just plain terrible. My faculty was unwilling or unable to provide context for what interested me. It was only in the last several years that I began to piece together the historical context that exerted so much influence over me (that which people label generically as the '80s). My perspective is less a longing for the return to the age of decadence and more a feeling that there is fertile ground to mine for ideation." J Sargenti

Dimensions:

Height: 8 in (20.32 cm)Width: 5.75 in (14.61 cm)Depth: 6 in (15.24 cm)

Style:

Post-Modern (In the Style Of)

Materials and Techniques:

Wood,Hand-Painted

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

2010-

Date of Manufacture:

2020