About my traffic utility box design:

“Neurons in the Bone”

Original Medium: mixed media collage

The assignment of a utility box in front of the Capitol Building brought to mind the multitudes contained in the concept of structure. Organic structures are endlessly varied, but strikingly similar: the crawling growth of neurons echoes the root patterns of plants, tree branches rake at the air like skeletal fingers. Yet just across the street from this box stands a no less imposing structure, constructed and upheld by the hands and minds of humans: the building that represents the political center of California.

The diagrams of human bones and neurons in this collage come from a vintage anatomy textbook, and most of the plants featured are found in California and the western United States. I want the juxtaposition of the naturally occurring bodies of local flora with the bodies of governance to remind us that while we live on this land and attempt to impose our will over it, we are ourselves organic structures that will decay and our parts repurposed.

We’re inevitably shaped by our environment as much as we shape it in turn. The complex and abstract structures of governance feel immutable, but they’re ultimately the product of choices made by our fallible little mushy brains, and no more interminable than any living thing. Is the governing body we see across the street really as inexorable as the weeds growing on its grounds?