The world shut down and many of us stayed home. In 2020, I shifted my artistic practice toward my most immediate surroundings and created a series of wood carvings based on remnants found in my yard during its remediation. My home, like hundreds more in my neighborhood, is part of a superfund site in which the EPA is working to remove lead contamination in the soil. Local foundry sand, the source of the lead, had been used as fill when the community was first built. Through this process, my yard went from being a mix of native grasses, clover, and weeds, alongside chunks of concrete, stumps and other bits of trash, to being a pristine field of fescue; what many would consider the ideal yard.
While harmful lead was gone, and I gained a new lawn, I found myself contemplating what was lost. I saw this process of removal and replacement as a metaphor for our complex connection to place and community and profoundly indicative of the many dramatic changes my community is undergoing. Like many urban neighborhoods, mine has seen major shifts in the demographics of the people who live here as well as in home prices and overall physical condition. Closely studying and recreating the remnants that were dug up allowed me to carefully consider the specific reality and history of the space in which I live and to know it better, despite its impending transformation.