Woven City

This playful and awe-inspiring installation about trains, roads, and the ways people connect with each other features a large-scale wood and aluminum artwork measuring 31 feet by 14 feet, complemented by four smaller paintings.

"Woven City" balances natural materials and modern techniques to create a work that impresses with scale and delights in a playful and earnest subject matter. Each material depicts a different part of Allston and Boston: train tracks of maple, local streets of oak, and highways of dark walnut - each meticulously crafted to create an urban tapestry. Perceptive viewers will see echoes of local maps throughout the artwork’s twisting forms. Through all of these forms, a shining mirror-aluminum Charles River streaks through the interlacing modes of transportation and connection. These pathways for movement and human connection - both built and natural - bind us together, creating, in all of their beautiful messiness, a woven city.

The four smaller paintings that accompany the main piece echo its themes, offering viewers a more intimate perspective on the narrative of "Woven City." The paintings are rendered in a richly detailed, folk-Americana style - highlighting the human element of an often “efficiency” oriented vision of transportation. Each painting features modes of transit and movement through the ages, with nods to Boston and Allston history: the coach and buggy at the Allston speedway, the old A-line subway, the sturdy 97 bus, and the iconic Packard automobile.

"The MBTA and our roads may be a bit of a mess, but that mess shows a city built up over decades and centuries - and represents generation after generation shaping a city and being shaped by their city,” said Golob. “I try to create duality in my work: a sense of play while also engaging larger issues. I want people to be excited and drawn into thinking more deeply about how we connect with each other.”