Broken 108"h x 278"w, plaster inlay on wood panels, 2020-2025
(Installation view of Broken at The Do Right Hall in Marfa, Texas, 2025)
Broken is a 23x9-foot wall installation which I made over five years out of 308 carved birch panels with plaster
inlay. Each 8x8-inch panel, from top left to bottom right, shows approximately nine square miles of land along a section of the
Rio Grande, from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico, that has served to delineate the U.S.A./Mexico border since 1848. In this quiet,
monochromatic work, I methodically whittled out the river with wood tools, filled in the negative space with plaster
and then sanded until smooth. Each wooden board is part U.S.A. and part Mexico in varying proportions. Across each board is
an ever-changing, chalky white, vascular line representing the river. As the river undulates, sometimes Mexico is north of the
United States, while at other times small islands of land appear caught in the middle of the flow. There are two massive
aneurisms -- formed by dams at Amistad Reservoir and Falcon Lake -- that take over the visual surface creating several, nearlysolid,
white panels. This work is an attempt to celebrate this shared waterway and to blur, erase and discuss
the imaginary line that runs down the middle, a boundary that has animated political discourse for decades.
