Scraps of paper. Receipts, They blow by us on a windy sidewalk; they litter empty spaces in our city, the gardens, the courtyards. Omnipresent business cards, for locksmiths or movers or marijuana dispensaries, crammed hurriedly into doorways, fall to the ground and add color to our vestibules. Even at home, when we're busy or distracted, old newspapers and magazines and mail containing fliers, bills, half-read letters, pile up, almost when we're not looking. I do look, though, and collect and save, and in these discarded scraps find a palette and an expanding world of images, colors, ideas.
Many of these pieces involve creating a grid, one foot square, drawn in pencil on white paper, divided into half-inch squares. Within these strict parameters (24 squares across, 24 down), I use found paper to create both images and messages, cutting each morsel of paper into a half-inch square, or two nestled triangles, filling up the grid, square by square. In a sense, each piece is a small quilt, yet a quilt delivering no comforting warmth. And not just a quilt, but also a piece of sculpture: many of the pieces are in bas relief. In a very literal sense, I am taking the garbage hurled at us in the election-haunted America, making order out of it, and sending a message back.