400 Square Feet, #3, 2024
Pea gravel, Japanese whisk broom

Military style barracks buildings used to house Japanese American incarcerees were 100 feet long by 20 feet wide. Each building was divided into five 20 by 20 foot sections, which the government called "apartments."

The wood walls dividing each space did not reach into the peaked roof area, creating a large open space across the entire building, allowing noise and conversations to be easily heard by all. The spaces held up to six people, often entire families or groups of single men or women. A common method of creating privacy was to hang bed sheets to divide areas of the room.

In the case of my family, my father initially shared a barrack space with his three older siblings and their mother. Eventually, two of his three siblings would leave for jobs in the Midwest, and his father would return to live with the family. My father spent 3 years, from age 13 to age 16, living within 400 square feet.

Visitors to the Hawthorn Contemporary exhibition were invited to take a stone. Throughout the run of the exhibition, I periodically tended to the boundaries of the stones with a Japanese whisk broom.

This is the third iteration in the series, 400 Square Feet. The first was a simple gaffer tape line on the floor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside gallery, and the second was constructed with tissue paper at OS Projects.