Vanishing Welcome, 2026
Blank aluminum signs, steel posts, installed at Silverwood Sculpture Park in St. Anthony, MN
Recently I’ve spent a lot of time driving Midwestern highways to residencies and art installations. Stretches of flat or slightly rolling land on either side of the car, roads dotted with agriculture, industry, small and larger towns. Snow, familiar from all my life’s winters. Crops that grow in this place lush with seeding and yellow with each harvest. The blue skies and big fluffy clouds that my friends from California admire – they don’t get clouds like that out there. And yet, as a queer and trans person who was born in and now live again in South Minneapolis, I am also fearful of rural spaces. Fearful that I am not welcome. I see signs for Trump all over. I also see Welcome signs in each town. My outsider status is both self-imposed and imagined, and I know that my fear is not borne of any real exile. As a white settler in the upper Midwest, the borders in my mind are unstable, between urban and rural, known places – like my friends’ lesbian aunts’ cabin, and imaginary unknown – the towns in between here and there. State borders feel increasingly real and rigid as lines are drawn on the protection or outlawing of trans people in a patchwork. National borders create real exile and danger and death for others, immigrants, not me. And this land has all been stolen and renamed by colonial settlers. My driving and watching is one of sign watching. Signs of the landscape shifting, signs of townships and population, signs of decay in faded illegible or chipped paint, or of maintenance in mowed stripes. I started to make and dream up signpost sculptures as metaphor for signs of the times and where a person stands in a place.
1/5th of the budget for this sculpture has been donated to the Waḳan Ṭípi Center in St Paul, MN. Consider a donation to this wonderful new Dakota led, Native-run East Side environmental stewardship nonprofit.
Special thanks to: Silverwood Park and staff including Eileen Cohen and Alyssa Bagus for logistical support, Adam Frank and the ground crew including Aaron and Nick for the thoughtful, sunny day installation support. John Fleischer for picking this sculpture! Rob McClain for math prowess on the site. Jake at Safety Signs. And Chandler Daily for multiple site visits and emotional support.
Photos by Emmett Ramstad
Recently I’ve spent a lot of time driving Midwestern highways to residencies and art installations. Stretches of flat or slightly rolling land on either side of the car, roads dotted with agriculture, industry, small and larger towns. Snow, familiar from all my life’s winters. Crops that grow in this place lush with seeding and yellow with each harvest. The blue skies and big fluffy clouds that my friends from California admire – they don’t get clouds like that out there. And yet, as a queer and trans person who was born in and now live again in South Minneapolis, I am also fearful of rural spaces. Fearful that I am not welcome. I see signs for Trump all over. I also see Welcome signs in each town. My outsider status is both self-imposed and imagined, and I know that my fear is not borne of any real exile. As a white settler in the upper Midwest, the borders in my mind are unstable, between urban and rural, known places – like my friends’ lesbian aunts’ cabin, and imaginary unknown – the towns in between here and there. State borders feel increasingly real and rigid as lines are drawn on the protection or outlawing of trans people in a patchwork. National borders create real exile and danger and death for others, immigrants, not me. And this land has all been stolen and renamed by colonial settlers. My driving and watching is one of sign watching. Signs of the landscape shifting, signs of townships and population, signs of decay in faded illegible or chipped paint, or of maintenance in mowed stripes. I started to make and dream up signpost sculptures as metaphor for signs of the times and where a person stands in a place.
1/5th of the budget for this sculpture has been donated to the Waḳan Ṭípi Center in St Paul, MN. Consider a donation to this wonderful new Dakota led, Native-run East Side environmental stewardship nonprofit.
Special thanks to: Silverwood Park and staff including Eileen Cohen and Alyssa Bagus for logistical support, Adam Frank and the ground crew including Aaron and Nick for the thoughtful, sunny day installation support. John Fleischer for picking this sculpture! Rob McClain for math prowess on the site. Jake at Safety Signs. And Chandler Daily for multiple site visits and emotional support.
Photos by Emmett Ramstad