Each day, the artist collects refuse along a 9' x 220' area in front of a public park, connecting with the discarded items, their unknown origins, and reflecting on the human hands that dropped them into the space.
The title of this piece comes from the storm drains in the performance area that empty into the ocean via the San Lorenzo River, which is directly adjacent to the park.
No One Wants to Step in It
How to best be a good steward of the ecosystems we inhabit is complex, even when it comes to deceptively simple actions like cleaning up litter and picking up after a dog.
An item meant to be used to take responsibility for pet waste is also designed to be a single-use plastic; the manufacture, shipping, and sale of these bags use resources and add a burden to the environment. No one wants to step in dog shit, but is putting organic waste in a plastic bag and sending it to a landfill a supportive ecological action?
Handling Strangers' Butts
Cigarette butts are the most common form of what is retrieved. What relationship is there between engaging in an act that irrefutably harms oneself and many others in one's habitat? What happens when these butts make their way from the street to the ocean? Are those who pass by this form of trash without removing it complicit with those who discard it?
What responsibility rests with the companies that manufacture such a harmful product? Does the magnitude of the political power that allows them to hoard money by making and distributing a highly addictive and deadly product make individual action irrelevant?
Karen Mason captured this viral photo of a black skimmer bird feeding its chick a cigarette filter on a beach in Florida, USA.
Micro-conservation is a concept proposed by the artist to describe a deeply personal environmental practice that gives everyday people ways to connect and care for the habitat they call home. It is designed to give individuals a process for identifying their unique ecological values, including an acknowledgment of the resources and constraints (e.g., time, money, work and family obligations) that influence their ability to live in alignment with those values.
With deep self-compassion and without self-judgment, the process helps the practitioner choose actions on a small and local scale that create openings to decrease climate crisis overwhelm and despair. It emphasizes stewardship, inclusivity, befriending the species we live alongside, and fostering environmental hope. By framing ourselves as not separate from nature, pathways to nurture the ecosystems we live in have space to emerge.