"Gang Aft Agley"

February 2022

Epoxy clay, resin, found alder branch, welded & acid burned iron, acrylic, freeform darning

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The title is in reference to Robert Burns’ poem To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With The Plough. The original quote in Scots Gaelic is “The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley” (oft go awry)

NYC is a city that is extremely hostile to young people without generational wealth. It is nearly impossible to maintain a living situation, much less facilitate a space where community-driven artistic expression occur. Legislators have sought to expunge “illegal” homes & rid themselves of the non-commercially-viable culture which they generate. Paradoxically, it is these spaces that, through the blood & sweat of disenfranchised young people, give American cities which consider themselves to be cultural hubs the personalities that they profit from.

The question of the absolute precarity of young artists’ lives in American cities is one that legislators seem not to care about, and they would evidently rather see them homeless or dead (see Ghost Ship Fire, 2016) than living within their means while creating a culture which obviously enriches the area it exists in.