Before I left Austin, Texas in 2006, I spent much time exploring the freeway systems that encircled and bisected the city, often walking where most don’t walk – under bridges and overpasses, across busy frontage roads lacking sidewalks – to examine their intimate physical characteristics. I was fascinated with the enormous, sublime formality and impersonal nature of the sites and spaces that together made up systems built to carry vehicles elsewhere, fast.
Parting Gifts was a series of interventions designed to call attention to subtle flaws in such concrete landscapes, as well as to marks left by others who spent time in them, out of choice or necessity. I spent hours beneath two overpasses on opposite ends of town, tracing my finger along the cracks and fissures, filling holes with colorful string and bits of yarn. This action was recorded on video (footage of which has since been lost), and postcards were made with maps and images designed to encourage people to seek out these sites. The video and postcards were presented as part of the solo exhibition “Degrees of Separation”, shown at Women and Their Work Gallery in Austin in late 2006.
