Driving around looking for material this morning, I found an empty lot on South Main with a newly dug foundation. The clay looked promising so I got out to check, when a man in a truck stopped to ask what I was doing there. I find that the oddness of the truth – I'm here to check out the clay for sculptures, or I'm here to see if any new dogs have been dumped – sufficiently confounds most people. They usually cock their heads sideways but say nothing, and then just drive off.
After the man left, I formed a handful of the clay into various sized lumps and squeezed them together (though the shadows give it a slightly anthropomorphic look that was not intended) and set it atop some bricks, with the flooded foundation footings in the background. My original intent was to photograph it as part of my Refuse Sculpture series, but it seemed to me a new thing.
So now I am thinking: What would it look like to create a series of found-object and clay sculptures from a single lot? To make them and display them on the lot itself?