“In my beginning is my end …    … In my end is my beginning”

T.S. Eliot, East Coker

The sandbox as a site and as an empty canvas. A place where a child is engaged in a game of free play as physical material is continually leveled, maneuvered and shaped into latent forms. A site and material liberated from any specific function as disparate objects are found and introduced within an indiscriminate playing field. Events transpire as figures and ground engage in developing or refining processes based on the desired motives or upon the response to chance encounters. If neglected, the site accepts its inevitable fate as the built forms smooth towards an approaching flatness. Entropy; the process of slow destruction seen in the ruins around us and when activity is forever exhausted all that will remain is a desert.

Reflections of the Built Environment, Greenpoint, 2016. Oil pastel on paper, 22×30″ ©TyskaSullivan

The city with its hustle and bustle to meet new market demands, actively seeks change in the built environment. During prosperous times the city seeks to devour itself as old forms make way for new ones. A street smart city continually on the move, initiating new designs in response to emerging needs. As the market falls so does the activity and the need to develop. In the city, littered here and there are marginal places tucked away in forgotten corners or lost out on the fringes. Places removed from everyday life, deteriorating within a disregarded terrain containing discarded events. Out of sight means out of mind and this very neglect is also the opportunity for freedom.

Everyday complacent communities strive for permanence and reverence but likewise there can only be grounds for change with communities in squalor and impoverishment. Polarities exist in the need for development, whether it is the wiping clear of entire zones of destitution in order to work from a clean slate, to the piecemeal advancement in which existing character is respected and the steady seeds of growth are incorporated about the community. Within this active playground there is always the pervading tension between creation and response. Even the most marginal of places possess traces of humanity that are interconnected through time and across boundaries. The remote histories become transformations for future opportunities. Here within the developing environment, there is a dialogue between the senses and the imagination as the vivid material’s presence exchanges with the internal wanderings of the mind.

-TS