Over the past decade I have been engaged with an ongoing series of public installations under the title “Basics”. Conceived as part of a larger museum installation, the series has since had in excess of 60 iterations in urban, semi-urban and rural environments throughout the US. Every installation within this series is unique to its site, but the series shares a common material language using 2x4 construction lumber, the most ubiquitous material in the North American context. The work is allowed to age over time, and at the end of its installation the material is cycled back into the material stream of the construction industry. I like to think of the sculptures as temporary formations of material in transition, of material borrowed from the cycles of material consumption.