Sneak Peeks
2024

We all do it. We look in people’s windows as we walk down the street. Living in Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood – a neighbourhood of apartment buildings – you can’t help but look up at a lit window as you walk by. The act feels transgressive. But, from the sidewalk, the view is acute and you can’t actually see in. The frame of the window becomes an abstract parallelogram where only ceilings, light fixtures, tall plants, tall furniture, and window sill detritus present themselves to you. Your transgression is made innocent by the negation of real access.

By design apartment buildings are stacks of identical units. From the outside the windows are all the same shape, yet each window is unique and presents the tenant’s personality to the outside world. Walking around the West End at night I was attracted by the contrasting colours of light people use in their apartments and in the contrast of light and dark that takes familiar shapes and distorts them into glowing geometric forms.