chalk pastel on paper 51.5” x 65”

I began my ‘Chinatown’ series when I lived on Grand Street.
Every day weaving through cramped sidewalks odorous with dried goods, fish salesmen yelling prices, steamy windows
with rows of voluptuously hanging ducks and chickens
glistening with grease, blazing neon signs in texts foreign to
me, and I thought that if I drew these single passing
moments,

then I might capture something unseen and perhaps an intimate understanding of the neighborhood.

The large scale of these drawings is deliberate so that, in a sense, the windowpane has been removed and the market brought into the viewer's space, transporting one community into another. Perhaps this project will also become a homage to the individual proprietor, the corner store, and that place of local congregation as these particular neighborhoods quietly disappear giving way to the realities of urban gentrification and one-stop supermarkets.

guache on paper