17/05/2026
Home needs to be safe. Study Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and you will see that safety is a basic human need just above breathing. On June 24, 2021, the Surfside building of condominiums collapsed due to water leaking and eroding its structure over time. I was renting a condo in an old building on the water’s edge in Miami at the time, and I thought of the collapse as I tried to sleep each night for a few weeks following. Then I saw that the sea air had corroded the cement pillars in the garage that were holding up my building. I came home one day to find a notice from the city taped to the front gate, demanding that the building be repaired or demolished. I moved back to a building in which I had formerly lived in a different part of the city. I initially left it because of noise. Two months later, its association sent out an email that all residents would need to park in a garage two blocks down. Inspection revealed that pool chemicals had been poured incorrectly, spilling and eroding the cement columns down to the metal rebar that held up the building and the six story garage under the seventh floor pool. It was the same situation as Surfside. I lived on the fourteen floor. The repairs were done correctly. This painting expresses feelings from my experience in a non-literal way, as do some paintings in oil that I did around that time.
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