Urban Deterioration Obliteration (U-DO)

I'm Paul Howe.
I'm a sculptor.
I'm from New York.
I've been around the sun twenty four times.

See my website for all of the awesome things I've made. paulhowe.info

I'm a graduate student now at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I study sculpture here.

I can't make sculpture anymore. I can no longer make a case for it. I can't justify working alone in my studio, making pretty objects, discussing socioeconomic problems and criticizing everything all the time, while I'm safe in my little bubble of colleagues and professors and books. I feel like a gomer.

I need to get out into the world, and instead of criticizing it and bitching about the problems I see, It's high time I just did something about them using the skills I have.

I'm going to walk around my town, Greensboro, NC, every day. I'll have with me a notebook, a camera, and a tape measure, and I'm going to document all of the broken, deteriorating, or badly designed public infrastructure I come across (there is a lot of it...). I'll then, with my vast resources of skills, tools, equipment, materials, and awesomeness that I've hoarded over the years, design, create, and then implement solutions for these things. I'm going to fix my city, make it a little nicer, one small project at a time, for at least the next year, every day.

I'm talking about making things shine, making things a little easier, giving things we've built the dignity they deserve, and I'm talking about doing it for free, using recycled or reclaimed materials whenever possible, and, having fun doing it. Good old American thrift, with sparkling quality and character.

I'm sick of merely noticing and complaining about how poorly maintained and broken everything is. I'm taking matters into my own hands - directly.

I wish to act as an effective, concerned, creative, citizen.

I have a fully equipped metal fabrication shop and wood shop at my disposal. I have my own private studio at my disposal for record keeping and planning and storage. I have a small fortune's worth of my own tools and equipment for actual work in the field, I have a flatbed pickup truck that I fully own and maintain, and I have huge piles of steel, wood, bricks, cement, hardware, and paint, among other things.

I'm also handsome and charming.

Подкрепен от Boston, MA (August 2011)