Updraft America

Partisan politics render Congress dysfunctional.  From a year’s subscription to The Congressional Record, I folded 10,752 paper airplanes, striped them red or blue, and installed them in opposing bins, rising into the air in squadron-like formation.  Those that bridged the divide took on the color purple, the color of reason in politics.

UnPresidented

In 1895, Edvard Munch created his iconic pastel painting, The Scream.  This re-imagining of it is drawn using Donald Trump quotations.  The railings and sidewalk provide a timeline in which the horror of the Covid-19 pandemic slowly unfolds.

We the People

In one of its first acts, the Trump administration worked to ban immigration from six predominantly Muslim countries.

Khe Sapa

The 1868 Fort Laramie treaty returned the Black Hills of South Dakota to Native Americans. Six years later, when an expedition led by General Custer found gold, the treaty unraveled. Fifty years after Congress officially broke the treaty, the carving of Mt. Rushmore began, indelibly claiming this sacred land.

Cadmus

Paul Cadmus died just three years after enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Cadmus’ drawing of his partner of thirty years is redrawn here using the Writ of Certiorari and the testimony before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Windsor case (2013) which successfully sought the repeal of Section 3 of DOMA.

After Cadmus II

This companion piece, again a re-creation of a Cadmus drawing, is realized using the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Windsor case.

Surplus

America has already experienced three straight years of increases in our homeless population.  Because of COVID-19, it is expected that an additional quarter of a million people will be homeless, literally living on the streets, by the end of this year.  Surplus is created from the rubble of a Chevy Chase, Maryland sidewalk.  

Dead Sea

Oceanic dead zones worldwide have increased eight-fold since the 1960’s.  Created from 16-guage, hand-bent steel, Dead Sea is an apocryphal warning.

Alienable Right to Life

Mass shootings happen when angry, troubled individuals have access to firearms.  With the pull of a trigger, they deny their victims the foremost right upon which our country was founded–the inalienable right to life. Each person who argues against common sense gun legislation is also complicit in this denial.  

Protect Them

Americans spend over one billion dollars each year on child safety items: car seats, bike helmets, water wings. But what are we doing to keep them psychologically safe? As you walk through this art installation, you will hear voices recounting their hurts that haven’t healed, their stories of bullying, social isolation, neglect, abuse.