Trash Drawing Series
It took a few years, but finally the City planted a tree in front of my building in the East Village. I decided the tree needed a garden to grow up and out of. It took a few trips to the Union Square Farmers’ Market but soon my garden was filling in nicely. But not just with flowers: receipts, coffee cups, candy wrappers, cigarette boxes, beer bottles, gallon jugs, saw blades, business cards, padlocks - you name it, I found it in my garden. Soon each piece of trash became the focus of a miniature pen and ink drawing - over 350 in all - a history of twenty-one square feet of New York: what people throw out or lose, stores that come and go, the scrawled address of a rendez-vous planned or thought better of, taxi rides begun or ended, a meal eaten, a blouse bought - lives lived with only scraps left behind as proof - pieces of evidence of a City where everything comes and goes - people, places, possessions - with twenty-one square feet of soil as witness.
