After paying two dollars and providing my name and date of birth, I pass through the scales and enter a new, yet somehow familiar, landscape of vehicles somewhere between the city and suburbia. The junkyard follows the logic of suburbia; cars replace houses, arranged in a grid with trunks and beds serving as backyards. The strange familiarity of this space becomes clearer as I wander through the gridded rows with only a sketchbook and a 5-gallon bucket in hand. My eyes take in the remnants of those who have passed before me, leaving fragments from their departure scattered like confetti on the ground. I begin foraging, my gaze jumping from piled transmissions to shimmering pools of fluid. Oil ripples around coil springs resting under the chassis, vibrant shards glowing in my mind as they form compositions on the ground. 

To me, the junkyard is a concentrated space of toxicity, wonder, and recycling. There is both environmental harm and reuse occurring, translating into the larger world but comprehensible within the fenced boundaries. Conventional junkyard salvagers seek out parts to remove, recycle and recontextualize them within their cars or projects. This recycling is part of the positive flourishing of the junkyard ecosystem, but it’s accompanied by the environmental impact of the parting process, which saturates the soil and the immeasurable amount of waste present. What fascinates me is that there’s even a 5% environmental tax for taking parts out of the space. The humor isn’t in the tax itself, but in the quantifiability of the harm inflicted through the upcycling and recycling of some of the vehicles in this gridded space.

The junkyard is full of haunting wonder, from the vehicles that hold stories of the lives they once carried to the ground speckled with detritus left behind by those salvaging coveted parts. I am a junk scavenger. As a junk scavenger, I tend to the ground with curiosity, foraging for loose scraps and fragments left behind, compiling libraries of objects that possess a mischievous charm and wonder. In a world full of clutter, both visual and physical, the junkyard remains a space where I practice my visual play, scavenging fragments that tug at my curiosity. Within this space, my mind is animated by exhaust pipes wiggling across the ground past wire bouquets, sprouting wildflowers, and clusters of springs vibrating with energy against a backdrop of rusted vehicles with peeling paint. This visual play, practiced in the junkyard, has become a tool I use to interact with the world around me. These images are moments that stick with me and inform the work I make.