Michael Ashkin

Michael Ashkin is an American artist who makes sculptures, videos, photographs and installations depicting marginalized, desolate landscapes.[1] He is best known for his use of miniature scale and modest materials.[2]
Ashkin also authored Garden State, a book which compares the New Jersey Meadowlands to a formal garden. [3] He is a contributing author to (Untitled) Experience of Place. [4] In 2014, A-Jump Books published Ashkin's Long Branch a book of photographs and text documenting the destruction of a New Jersey neighborhood. [5]
Ashkin was born in Morristown, New Jersey, and received an M.A. in Middle East Languages and Cultures from Columbia University. Before becoming an artist, he taught Arabic and worked as a computer programmer for investment banks. [6] Ashkin's work was included in Documenta 11 in 2002, and in the 1997 Whitney Biennial. He is a professor at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning as well as a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.

-Watery, Domestic at The Renaissance Society