I began this series of assemblages as my thesis work while studying at Maryland Institute College of Art, an institution whose undeniable prestige contrasts greatly with the backdrop of a city suffering from many urban ills. At the time I lived in a house in which the front door looked out on a street of stately row homes, while the back door opened onto a neighborhood of considerably less economic opportunity, with all the complications that entails. I was literally living between two worlds, walking out the front door to go to my classes at the fancy university, and setting out from the backyard on long, meandering walks to try and understand the life experience of the majority of the city’s inhabitants. The resulting artwork celebrates this tension, finding a haunting beauty within the abandon, celebrating the people who live within the agglomerations of our collected junk.