My collaborator and I, Matthew Paulson, were asked to create a public art project for the newly appointed Station North Arts and Entertainment District utilizing one of the many vacant row houses in this geographical area. Everyday over a two week period, we collected trash in the immediate neighborhood surrounding 1726 Barclay Avenue in Baltimore, MD as an effort to orchestrate a community clean up in hopes of engaging the residents from that neighborhood, many of who recognized the new zoning as the beginning of gentrification of their neighborhood. Some residents joined us in the effort but many more asked why we were bothering taking on such a daunting effort for that community at that point in time.

At the end of each day we took every bag of trash we collected back to the studio and organized every item by color. Once we gathered enough color coordinated trash, we then repackaged the trash into custom heat sealed plastic bags filled with each color, no matter the item. We represented the trash collected as a colorful mosaic by attaching the individual plastic bags to the long boarded up windows of 1726 Barclay.

This act was not only one of community action but also one of appropriation.