Checked Paint, Bolt

Junk has always held a special appeal for me – I like the way everything man makes can be so quickly degraded by the elements. I like the view of something that has been neglected and is slowly but certainly being re-adopted by nature.

This 'No Entry' sign was in a vacant lot in the corner of a giant university campus, where all disengaged workings were brought to die. There were scores of bent signposts, graffitied lamp standards, chipped concrete blocks – everything broken and scarred and unfit to represent a shiny new scholastic image. It was like a sloppily excavated burial ground.

I liked the way the paint had checked and peeled from this sign, as though it had been baked in some terrifically high temperature oven. There was adhesive residue as well, perhaps from a student political sticker. Like an old person's face, the sign had layers of complexity that made me wonder what it would be like to do nothing but watch the world go by, days and years at a time, from some abrubt beginning to some unwholesome end.