"Paradigm" (front)

Installation at the California African American Museum

Metal and Aluminum, 50' x 6' x 5' 6"

Paradigm is a site specific installation designed to investigate its surrounding environment as an object consisting of a process of ongoing relationships between man and nature while addressing our ecological responsibility towards a healthy environment tomorrow.

I place Paradigm in multiple locations that are at risk and affected by pollution, such as mountains, deserts and watersheds. The next location I plan to install Paradigm in is Ballona Creek in Culver City, California, which runs polluted water into the Pacific Ocean.

Paradigm aspires to ensure that Ballona Creek is no longer seen as “a thing-in-itself,” but instead as a physical region consisting of layered evidence of multiple issues that need attention and support so that it can become a cleaner and healthier environment. Eight shapes will be placed in Ballona Creek – each dedicated to a toxin found in it, such as Cyanide, Coliform Bacteria, Copper, Zinc, etc., according to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Santa Monica Bay Watershed Management Area summery in 2009. The toxins, currently discharged into the ocean, affect the wildlife and quality of the water, resulting in an acute health risk for humans swimming, surfing and eating the fish. The grouping will investigate the space in which the water is held and the relationship of its contents to the surrounding community. The work will have a universal aesthetic while trapping trash that flows down the creek.

Paradigm is an example of our capacity to impact and control nature’s elements while exposing the environment’s desperate need for our constructive intervention.