This small painting, 8" x 6", was made with watercolor (commercially made using natural, hand-ground pigments, and beeswax as the vehicle) and gouache on paper made from the inner bark of a white mulberry tree. The white mulberry was imported to this continent to create a silk industry in the 18th century and has spread widely; it is considered to be an invasive species. The subject matter is of objects found in so-called "vacant" lots around my studio in Baltimore City. 

This painting contains images of objects found in a lot that, for around 100 years, contained a block of houses that, in turn, contained families and individuals who lived worked and played on this ground, for more than 100 years. Though it is unlikely that the Piscataway or other First Nations peoples, settled on this specific land (it is too far from good fishing waters, I think) they and, later, European settlers passed through and probably farmed the land. The houses that existed may

One rainy Fourth of July night, as I was walking to a neighbors' house, I saw of a pack of Newport cigarettes with several whole, unsmoked but crushed, cigarettes nearby  — I can imagine the....disappointment? frustration? anger?.... of the smoker as those costly cigs fell into the muddy field. It seems like a portrait of a small tragedy. 

I am not a smoker, not that I didn't try when I was in college. Therefore, I do not fully understand the popularity and ubiquity of Newport cigarettes in Baltimore. Nor do I understand the tendency to just drop the empty pack or empty carton on the street when the contents have been consumed. Empty Newport packs are almost everywhere in Baltimore and, seemingly, especially in the neighborhoods around my studio. I can follow them like a trail of breadcrumbs to get home again. 

Recently, I have accepted the responsibility to clean the two-block area around my studio and I go out on alternate Sundays to pick up trash. I don't usually keep the things that I pick up (!), often I take a photo if I have a chance but, even when I get frustrated by the amount of trash that is left on the street and sidewalks, I treasure some of the still-lives that I find in this wonderful city.

This small watercolor painting is based on a photograph that I took on one of those days of objects found in a small plot of land, next to a corner grocery store, in Baltimore City: a full-sized, unsmoked, cigarette (a "loosie"), two partially smoked "butts", with matchsticks that might have been used to light those, and a perfectly good, brand-new, screw that was dropped in the lot and lost. I am very interested in the ways in which those objects tell stories of the people who live in this neighborhood and shop at that corner store. 

The painting is small, of an intimate size, 8" H x 6" W, unframed. It is currently in a show, GRIT, at XoXo Gallery, in the Maryland Art Place building.

I made a similar painting in or around 2023 as an homage to David Lynch's Blue Velvet and as a gift for a friend. This version was made at the request of the owner of Galactic Panther Gallery for a late 2023 exhibition. The idea of finding a severed ear (Blue Velvet? Van Gogh? the Japanese ghost story of Hoichi the Earless?) is horrifying mystifying — especially as a severly hearing impaired individual!