Roll Over And Look At the Stars

There is a quote: “When life knocks you down, roll over and look at the stars.” It’s meant to encourage a positive outlook, making lemons out of lemonade type of thing.  Roll Over & Look at the Stars is about my attempt to stay optimistic in an increasingly scarce and expensive housing market.  

The installation includes 310 star lamps created from cardstock and a mix of real estate magazine pages, workforce housing planning layouts, and ads on social media of people currently seeking housing, as well as ads for available housing. 127 star lamps are lit while 183 remain dark, representing the number of homes in the county that are vacant the majority of the year because of ownership by non-year round residents (58.7%). 

I fully believe in practicing gratitude. In using materials associated with Summit County’s housing crisis, however, I push back against relentless or blind optimism. When trying to disassociate from the issue by looking at something beautiful, the viewer is instead faced with it.  Our workforce needs homes. And by homes, I don’t mean quickly assembled structures to shelter the masses. This is about the opportunity for a sustainable quality of life for the people without whom the local economy would crumble. 

Photographs by Joe Kusumoto; Courtesy of Breckenridge Creative Arts.