watercolor & gouache on paper made from white mulberry bark, with the addition of an old love letter

This work is part of a series, "Vacant Lots Are Full of Stories", based on the idea that so-called vacant city lots are not at all "vacant" or empty of stories. The subject matter in each painting are objects found in one or more "vacant" lots, around my house — lots that were once full of homes, families and individuals who have left shards of their existence, shared and hidden. Those objects hold clues to stories that took place in a history that is now layered: a cigarette pack and several "loosies", a shard of beautiful china, dating to an indeterminate time decades ago, but which recently rose to the surface; a bottle cap from a Mexican soda; and rocks that have been part of this lot for millennia. Lots of layers, lots of stories — but not vacant lots. The paper was made from the bark of a white mulberry tree in a lot near my house. White mulberry, morus alba, is an invasive species that was introduced in colonial times, to create a silkworm-based silk industry.