The Golden Gate National Recreation area (which Ocean Beach is part of) is home to more endangered species than all of Yosemite. It is also home to an expanding human population. The energy and influx the area is receiving can either be used to make it stronger, more vibrant and diverse place— or else its popularity will take a toll on existing diversity.

My installation at Irving Street Projects explores the interplay of native species endemic to the Outer Sunset and the non-native species that have made it home. This residency gave me a chance to focus on ideas that I have been working on over the 5 years since I moved my art space to the Outer Sunset and learned that it had been the stage for the first butterfly extinction in North America. The butterfly’s fate became a metaphor in my work for talking about gentrification (a topic too hot at that time to discuss directly).

The Awesome Foundation would allow us to produce a “Field Guide” that will encapsulate this project/research in a way that is sharable and will live beyond the residency. A sharable art project that communicates about the needs of various species that call Ocean Beach home to help visitors become better neighbors. The Field Guide, while educating about the native species of Ocean Beach, will also evoke and complicating conceptions of gentrification, colonialism, and the subsequent problems of dividing into "native" and "non-native”— to get people thinking more deeply about the world around them.