Every day I see many people, most pushing shopping carts or other wheeled vehicles along sidewalks in the neighborhoods surrounding both my home and studio. These people are experiencing homelessness and often also experiencing something else, place-lessness. They move from place to place, temporarily stopping until they are forced to move again.

I see shopping carts overflowing with a person’s possessions, people propped on crutches and slumped in wheelchairs on the streets and sidewalks of my city every day and night. But occasionally, I see these items, these tools of support, abandoned and discarded in the weeds, thrown into the river or simply left in the middle of the sidewalk. I began to collect the ones which were clearly abandoned or useless and brought them into the studio. They are now transforming into sculptural objects.

The intention is to let them keep their raw brokenness but place them out of context and without humans attending to them. I also want to allow them to in some way “serve” or at least accommodate Nature as they have served humans previously.

The issues those experiencing homelessness are very similar to the issues facing much of the non-human natural world in the face of climate change. All experience dislocation, invisibility, risk, uncertainty, fear, place-lessness, voicelessness and disregard. The parallels are clear between these two worlds. How our society regards the value of a human life seems not so different from how society tends to value non-human life.

With that in mind, I find it intriguing to allow these sculptures to exist in a place between overt social commentary and something more transcendent. I want them to toggle back and forth between topical concerns like homelessness/environmental issues or sorrow and loss, and something luminous and glowing like resilience, hope and restoration. As always in my work, I do not offer a solution to these issues but seek to remain a compassionate witness to this difficult time.