Arguing 2013

In the winter and spring of 2013 I made three trips to Boston to work with graduate students at the Art Institute of Boston.  It was not long after I returned home from my second trip that the Boston Marathon bombings happened.  I know I would have been horrified in any case, but now, because I knew the city and it's people,  it meant more to me.  When I returned to Boston in May for my final visit, I knew I had to go to the site of the bombings.  It was a few miles from my hotel, so I put on my running clothes and jogged over. It was raining ever so slightly, and I worried that I would get caught in a downpour, but the rain let up as I got closer to the memorial site.

The memorial was a small, roped off area in Copley Square.   As I approached the memorial, I began to cry.  It surprised me--it came from such a deep, emotional place. Hundreds of pairs of  running shoes hung by their laces from the temporary fencing,  along with flowers, flags, running jerseys, candles, and just about anything that had meaning to the people who had come to pay their respects and wanted to leave something behind.

 Because of the rain, most things  were covered by thin sheets of plastic, so that everything seemed soft-- blurred under the translucent material.  

This photograph of flowers is collaged onto the elephant's torso in Arguing. It was my way of trying to make sense of something I'm having a hard time understanding.