Bring It Home To Me

3rd Ward, Houston
2021

In the song "Bring It Home To Me", Sam Cooke sings of an undying love for an individual that once took him for granted. He is willing to fully embrace this individual should they ever reconsider their departure. He expresses his willingness to forgive all trespasses for the sake of returning to a sense of wholeness.

I wanted to, in this action, show how I wish to care for the community. By offering my time, energy and creativity I would present the community with an original site specific sculpture at its gateway. Utilizing leftover spools of yarn, camping stakes and visual vocabulary from my previous exhibitions I claimed an esplanade at the entrance of the community and set to work.

I wanted to give those entering the 3rd Ward and those that reside within something no one else has ever considered a possibility. I wanted to present them with what The Heights of Houston has been able to experience: a very visible presence of installation art. I wanted to challenge those that witnessed the installation process and duration of the work's presence to imagine what is possible within the community as it pertains to publicly accessible installation art works. I wanted the community to question why it has never existed prior and whether there are plans for it in the immediate future.

I did not ask for permission to create the work because no one can calculate the cumulative impact that public artwork can have within a community that has been so chronically disenfranchised and suffered from such atrocious levels of disinvestment. No one should have to justify why a community as rich and teeming with creative ingenuity as 3rd Ward should or should not be able to have what so many affluent, predominantly white communities had and continue to have the pleasure of experiencing daily. I claimed the esplanade as my own to do whatever I saw fit, because it was obvious that the City of Houston had no interest in curating that same or similar experiences within the community.

I love the 3rd Ward and I will always bring my love, my art, my creativity and creative ingenuity back to them, back home.