144 Empty Parking Lots by Jenny Odell

125 Swimming Pools by Jenny Odell

Wednesday greetings, collectors! It's Youngna here with the second and third editions from San Francisco-based artist Jenny Odell, whose beautifully rendered obsessiveness Jen introduced to you a few weeks back. Jenny is a collector of larger than life objects, and in these newest editions, she has combed Google Satellite View to bring you 125 Swimming Pools and 144 Empty Parking Lots, each a rumination on these odd-yet-commonplace forms we live with and around.

As with yesterday's edition, prettymaps (paris) from Aaron Straup Cope, each of these works is produced from an immense amount of data, channeled into tools—Google Satellite View and OSM—respectively, that allow us to see the world as we never have before. For most of us, the information is fun to look at but overwhelming to take in. It is in the hands of these artists that infinite landscapes and data-points are deconstructed into beautiful forms.

That Jenny chose swimming pools and parking lots, two of the most commonplace memes in photography, as facets of her collections, evokes both a chuckle and complete awe out of me. As the lead on JBP's photography competition, Hey, Hot Shot!, I watch submissions come in throughout the year, keeping a constant eye out for photography memes. In 2009, we saw numerous entries capturing the economy and the recession; 2010 was a big year for cellphone photo submissions. The memes are often driven by the times, but there is also a handful of topics that percolate every season. Among these are taxidermy, nudes, gas stations at night and Jenny's subjects-of-choice: swimming pools and parking lots.

I point this out because these oft-tackled subjects are exactly the matter that's hardest to capture well. Among the successes are Alec MacLean's Houndstooth Pattern in Parking Lot, Carlo Van de Roer's baths and the here and there images that have come to be iconic versions of these subjects. Jenny, too, presents us with a new way of seeing familiar objects, creating intricate, puzzle-like collages that challenge us to look closely at both the pieces and the whole. When we zoom in on the pools' blue waters, we see the reflections of palm trees, fences, apartment complexes and telephone wires. When pulled back, we see a patchwork quilt made of pieces whose edges don't quite match, seemingly floating in space, waiting to be rearranged.

As Jen described in her previous newsletter: as the dimensions of the print grow, the fact that the objects in it are sourced from all over the internet moves to the forefront. As some objects soften and pixelate, the shift in appearance puts the focus on her process and the origins of the elements that make the whole. The process—that of scouring, collecting, shaping, compiling and carefully organizing each of the individual pools and parking lots into a single image—is what makes the output and the crafting of collections so very human and so very satisfying.

With that, I leave you to look forward to future arrangements from another artful gatherer—Lisa Congdon—whose ultimate collection of collections will soon be right here on 20x200 as prints for you to collect yourself!