ANCHORED JOURNEY: IN BETWEEN
Anchored Journey: In Between is an installation of approximately 3,000 hand-folded paper boats made from personal writings accumulated over fifteen years. The project began one evening in 2000 as I was leaving my studio near the railroad tracks in Tucson, Arizona. A yellow sheet of ruled paper fluttered to the ground in front of me. Across it, in black ink, was a single word: KEEP. I did not know where the paper had come from or who had written it, but I kept it.
That encounter gradually developed into a practice. I began saving pieces of paper I might otherwise have discarded—notes, calculations, lists, fragments of poetry, unmailed letters, and other traces of everyday life—and folding them into boats. Over the years, the collection traveled with me from home to home and studio to studio, quietly accumulating into an unintended record of lived experience.
In 2017, the boats returned to the Sonoran Desert near where the practice began. Installed across the landscape at Land With No Name, the fragile vessels carried fifteen years of thoughts, memories, and ordinary moments into an environment where they would not be preserved. Exposed to sun, wind, and monsoon rains, the boats were left to unfold, fade, weather, and eventually break down. Regional wildflower seeds were planted among them, allowing new growth to emerge as the paper disappeared.
What began with an unexpected instruction to keep ultimately became an act of letting go.
INSTALLATION AND WALK-THROUGH
AFTER 2 YEARS
