is on “HER” ITAGE THIS

Maddie Mertz “PEEP SHOW”

Stuck in finals means being stuck in studio.

Photos and postcards are a gateway to a world outside my 2 block radius

“Peep Show” plays on the provocative idea of the old 25-cent peepshows around Time Square. Old postcards from around the country tease the viewer.

You can look, but you can not be there.

2012

As graduation approaches, I’ve been reflecting on how I got to architecture school at Pratt in the first place.

It reaches back to 2012 when I decided I wanted to start drawing again even if I didn’t think I was good at it. I chose to draw textiles and basic geometries because I felt like it was the easiest. It quickly became my favorite activity.

A family member saw the drawings and suggested I might like studying architecture. It was a random, nonchalant comment that ended up putting me on a path to getting a bachelor’s degree.

To this day I don’t really see how the old drawings even relate to architecture. And I can’t imagine going to school for anything else now.

This fall I started doodling shapes and graphics again. Mostly out of a need to lengthen my attention span so I can sit in lecture classes post-covid. It’s always been a default to re-center myself.

They brought back memories of these old drawings and gave me a full circle feeling. Some things do actually stay the same.