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Paper Boats (2021)

On Tuesday October 26 2021 there was a particularly heavy rainstorm and my usual artist assisting job was cancelled for the day. I spoke to my mom on the phone that morning, and she told me there was a big puddle outside her window. She said that she wished we could make paper boats to float together like we did when I was a child. Later that afternoon I took a walk through Tompkins Square Park, and I stumbled upon a big puddle. It made me think of my mom. I went to my apartment and grabbed a box of crayons and the paper left inside my printer, and made my way back to the big puddle. As I began folding and sailing these boats in honor of my mother, I found myself interacting and sharing the experience with the park’s passers by. People young and old, local and visitor, joined me in folding, conversing, and sailing into the unexpected circumstance that was this day, filling the puddle with dozens of paper boats, each one alive and unique. As the hours went by and the floppy saturated boats sank, the puddle itself began to shrink and evaporate, revealing the fragments of these encounters, soaked in the material that made the day possible.

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