how to draw the damn fence

a snarky one liner i cant think of right now bc its 1am and i dont care!!!

How to Draw a Fence is a project about boundaries, and how these boundaries affect our relationship with what is on either side . using Mariners Marsh Park as a starting point, the project reveals that boundaries are not always "fences," even though the park is "locked" behind one.How can we redraw these boundaries to start including us?

This project is made possible by The Staten Island Arts Grant (2025) and The Puffin Group foundation (2025)
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It's the early 2000's, my dad and I are leaving the movie theater at the end of Forest Avenue. It's another New York City summer—hot, sticky, and humid, with an occassional evening breeze. I'm in the rear seat of the car and we drive home with the windows rolled down. Stopped at a red light, we hear frogs.

2017. Aerial Photo from Google Earth

2025. Aerial Photo from Google Earth

frogs in the swamp(2025)
graphite, 14in x 22in

Intersection at Forest Avenue and Union Avenue (1973)
Staten Island Advance

Intersection at Forest Avenue and Union Avenue (2025)

The wetlands have always been at the periphery of my summer memories, and today, the once blurry edge between the swamp and my childhood, has developed a literal fence. If not storage facilities, then industrial shipment, or other forms of ownership that are industrially privatizing the coast and turning it into a sea of grays, blacks, and fences. However, if we open Google Earth and pan all the way to Mariners Harbor, we see the bright greens and earthy browns of the wetlands.

There are residential neighborhoods to the east, a large container terminal to the west, the Kill van Kull coast to the north, and more woodlands and houses in the south. The park is an example of a recurring condition on the island, we're left on the street, surrounded on both sides by fences with no idea what lays beyond. These boundaries enclose nature (such as the fence at the park), or enclose us (the ring of storage facilities growing along the coast), leading to the question if this is how we want to experience our city. These "simple fences" are fraught with the age-old recurring conflict of man vs. nature, just on different scales.

You wait all these months for the weather to warm, the park to defrost, and when 11:30a hits, you can’t find the entrance, you’re late, disoriented, and a little sweaty. You finally pass through the gate, looking for the man of the hour, while rehearsing all the possible excuses for why you’re late, and when you see him at last—moving bags of soil, sweaty, and a little grumpy—you’re too shy and embarrassed to say anything you internally practiced and confess you were lost on the complete other side of the 107 acre park.

He repeats the obvious, “You’re late,” and you begin the walk through Mariners Marsh Park.