“These four houses are constructed out of tar and window screen set on Astroturf. Where each house sits the Astroturf is cut out and filled with a quarter inch of molasses. The molasses acts as the tar should, dark, oozy, mysterious and even sinister; and the tar acts as something more rigid and yet still not reliable. The Astroturf is synthetic, both in its chemistry and its color, and again reestablishes concepts of the tar technology and its foot-hold in synthetic chemistry. The project was meant to express isolation and “home”lessness: i.e. basic structures that imply a house, but don’t show the presence of a dweller. I was still thinking about those folks in New Orleans pushed out of their homes by the flood waters, and how I couldn’t empathize with their situation. My understanding of home or a house is a warm place that protects the contents from the outside world. Inside my happy home are rooms dividing the space even more, giving the inhabitants and their possessions privacy and protection from the other inhabitants. I can’t imagine not having a home, so I lack comparable empathy for those without a home. But if I make a house, and eliminate from it what I know to be home (warmth, protection, and privacy) could I better conceive of homelessness? Here the houses are “flooded” by something seemingly akin to murky floodwater from the gulf region (oil refineries and such).”

— Statement about the work excerpted from my master’s thesis