Ivory Towers

Partnership Tower
2021

I love walking around downtown Houston. Not because it's like the downtowns of other major metropolitan cities. Downtown Houston doesn't have very much to offer folks that visit. There's a few parks, bike trails and some eateries. However, Houston's downtown area is predominantly a business center with scattered bars and pubs.

I love our downtown because it is a mystery to me. The mystery, to me at least, lies in what takes place in the massive skyscrapers that line its streets and create our iconic skyline.

I love imagining the things that take place in buildings that require a suit and tie, possibly a key fob or key card to enter. I would daydream of what it takes to gain access to the spaces that these business professionals traverse daily.

I titled this work Ivory Towers because I always felt that these spaces were oppressive, as they blotted out much of the sky and didn't appear to offer much more than a nice view from evening to morning. But as I worked through this installation I meet some of the folks that work in these spaces and realized that they were just people.

I had often imagined so many of the same archetypes and was surprisingly rebutted by their openness and excitement surrounding the presence of the sculpture I was installing. It felt pretty awesome to have myself checked in this way, because oftentimes we assert what we imagine to be true while actually having very little to base these assumptions upon.

Through my creative practice I was able to enter a space I once thought to be closed and/or exclusive to find that everyone was just like me. They were people trying to make a living doing what they either loved or were confident in their ability to perform on a daily basis.

I'm extremely grateful for this opportunity as it has presented a space and opportunity to grow in many ways. Much like my other sculptural works, this is part of a larger conversation and dialogue that I have had internally. A conversation I am offering publicly for those wishing to take part in the discourse surrounding access and agency as it relates to the general public as a readily available audience.