Becky Mutrux

For many people, the phrase “scenic route” brings to mind a road passing through beautiful landscapes.  I’ve been on many such roads during the last twenty years, starting with California’s Pacific Coastal Highway and continuing through my years overseas to the Sagano Romantic Railway that runs from Arashiyama to Kameoka, in Japan.  There are always beautiful landscapes to discover, for those that have the eyes to see them.  Throughout this exhibition, you will be introduced to some of those places.  From the ruins of Petra to the ghosts of a long-dead ocean, a monument to love and a thousand memories made in Kyoto, these works present scenic places all over the world.  

However, another meaning is brought to mind, at least in my family.  When I was a kid, anytime my mom drove us the wrong direction, she said we were taking the “scenic route.”  This could be applied to my journey to studying my MFA at MCAD.  It was only after teaching two decades in six different countries that I was able to figure out the direction I wanted to go in: that of an artist.  As such, I hope that you will see these images not only as beautiful landscapes, but for the ideas that they seek to evoke: memory, imagination, time, and the tension between preservation and destruction bound up in the form of a tourist.