Fools Gold

Fools Gold was commissioned for the Foothills Art Center in Golden, Colorado in 2018 for the exhibition Finding Home, curated by Eriq Hochuli

Made from found construction materials

From its inception, Denver has been a boom and bust town. The town sprouted on the banks of the Platte where generations of the Southern Arapahoe had come to the confluence of the rivers to trade, bringing the first wave of displacement and gentrification as dusty streets sprawled where buffalo had once buried the landscape in masses of muscle and wooly fur.  The search for gold began there in 1858, and once it was found about four miles south of the Confluence, the gold rush was off and running, As quickly as the miners came, birthing the town that would come to be known as Denver, they just as promptly left, triggering a repeated cycle of growth and decimation that continued through the oil shale boom in the 1980’s and on to today.

“Fool’s Gold” explores the most recent iteration of this cycle, and how it feels to be living amongst and displaced by the most recent boom. Denver residents living amidst a maze of closed streets, constant noise, cheap materials and ugly construction are experiencing a level of disorientation more rapid than any previous generation has felt.  Overnight, landmarks disappear, beloved buildings vanish, new streets sprout and entire neighborhoods transform, newly branded by marketing names that alienate the previous residents who know the neighborhood is no longer meant for them.  Homes are stolen, dreams are crushed, predatory real estate signs attempt to dupe the elderly, and droves of the original residents of this place leave, lest they join the burgeoning ranks of working homeless who cannot afford or even find a place in a state with lower than 1% vacancy rates. 

In this installation, I’ve attempted to capture the chaos, anxiety and psychological disruption in the very materials polluting our visual landscape.  The shoddy materials used in creating these new, overpriced residences are used to create a tornado enveloping a crystalline structure inspired by iron pyrite, the gold that only fools will buy, a mineral of ersatz value.  The chaos overlays on top of the historic structure of Foothills Art Center, creating a swirling mass that mimics the disruption in the environment that we are all enduring.