Loiterer

In 2024, ninety years after a fire in a shelter for unhoused and poor migrants known as “transients,” the Lynchburg Public Library’s downtown branch moved in to the old service station at the site of the fire. Subsequently, signs reading "Loitering Laws Enforced" were posted on both sides of the library. Today, poor and unhoused folks who used to sit and rest on the picnic tables, benches, stairs, or grassy hills in this public space have been expelled by hostile signage. The space is largely devoid of human presence as a result.

The blue pen and ink drawings depict the present-day site of the 1935 Federal Transient Bureau shelter fire in Lynchburg, Virginia, combined with drawings from photographs of the original burnt-out structure and found-images. I combined the drawing/collage with a poster containing excerpts from poems containing the word "loiter." The combined sign was then left to loiter at the site, leaning on the back wall of the downtown branch of the public library.