Parked Outside the Door

While traveling the length and breadth of America, Mr. Petro captured scenes of mobility and permanence. Full of off-beat colors, textures, and randomness, each image of a vehicle make and architecture style embedded in the surrounding landscape of the nation is an expression of someone’s individuality and life style. The exhibit is on display at ArtSpace Herndon September 9 through October 5, 2014. The Artist Reception is Saturday, September 13, from 7 to 9 p.m.

“Vehicles and buildings,” says Mr. Petro, “have both enabled and formed the foundation of civilization. In buildings we conduct the business of our lives while our vehicles wait outside the doors, ready to efficiently transport us on to another location, another building. Almost as soon as they made their appearance, these objects went beyond being merely utilitarian. Using his creative nature man has adorned them and made them unique personal extensions of his individuality. In the modern age, these fundamental constructs are an inherent part of our existence, but they are also part of the background noise of our lives, often unnoticed and unremarkable except in their absence. In this exhibit we take notice of these incidentals, placing them on the center stage. These scenes of permanence and mobility, as expressions of someone’s individuality, are often not only beautiful, with off-beat colors and textures and randomness, but in the viewer they can awaken old memories of vehicle makes, and architecture styles, all embedded in the surrounding landscape of the nation. In addition, these images can also provide cause for reflection – what became of the humans who influenced the scene being witnessed, what inspired them, who were they, what statement were they trying to make?”