Better Homes and Gardens was created as an immersive and participatory installation, installed in Anacostia Art Center's Vivid Solutions Gallery. Over the course of 6 weeks, I maintained gallery hours to create the installation in real time and interact with visitors to the gallery.

People were invited to write down their responses to any of the following prompts on a piece of origami paper:

1. What do you like about your neighborhood?

2. What's one thing you would change about where you live?

3. Write your name or draw a picture

I would then guide visitors in folding an origami paper house. Once completed, they added their contribution to the ever growing community of houses that accumulated in the middle of the gallery space.

The installation explores the connection and disconnect between the homes and communities we live in and nature. There are two main components: paper origami houses and cut paper plant forms. Traveling by bike from Northeast DC to Anacostia I was drawn to the variety of plant life that grows wild along the river's edge. I used these plants as the templates to cut out of tissue paper.

The paper houses are meant to be a counterpoint to the paper plants. They are purposefully tiny to create a space where architecture is dwarfed and overwhelmed by plant life. The houses also serve as a contemplation on the nature of home, shelter and neighborhoods.