held with holding earth, and, with in time, to live (4th retelling), 2023

Salvaged chain link gate; common lawn grasses from Fort Worth and Mt. Washington; safety packing tapes; road signs; angle aluminum; angle and tube steel; carabiners; safety pins; paper clip; binder rings; star and moon melon seeds saved from fall 2018 planting; ribbon; mirrored plexiglas; sand from Moab; metal brush; AMT Caterpillar D8H Crawler Dozer Model (1:25 Scale); bolts; railroad spike from Utah State Route 279; produce mesh; souvenir pins; Utah National Park Christmas ornament.
5 feet high, 4 foot radius

This work is the 4th iteration, or "telling" of this piece. Each retelling has taken place in a different location and with a different assortment of objects but all have shared the central structure of the chainlink fence and dried grasses.
This retelling, focused on the red sand circle below the gate and made a door bottom sweep using strands of invasive lawn grasses. In the sand in cursive handwriting are phrases in the formula of "Against _____."
"Against Nowhere"
"Against no place"
"Against firsts"
"Against plain & simple"

These are descriptions historically used to describe "wilderness" and expeditions of discovery. Describing the land in such ways glosses over and covers up the vast and complex relationships at play in those landscapes, ranging from indigenous habitation to multi-species ecosystems and deeply complex geological records. Much of the American Southwest has seen patterns of economies based on natural resource extraction shift into economies of tourism. Utilizing signs, text, and symbols, this work links these economic developments and histories.

During the course of the exhibition, visitors were welcome to move the gate which had the secondary effect of erasing the text written into the sand.