Paris Fragment

A large slab of pavement from Paris. How did it get there? The simple answer is that we mailed it. At the post office, they asked us what was the value of the item. How do you begin to assign it a value? Do you weigh it? Do you calculate the price of asphalt in that country? Do you give it a value based on the value of other things that remind you of it?

The visitor to the gallery asks, "What is this?" "This is a piece of Paris." A softening of expression, a memory of a faraway city, a story from another time. A little later, the visitor brings her children back to see the grey piece of rock on the ground. "You've never been there before, but this is Paris," she says to her young children, pressing their small hands into the rock, "and Mummy spent some very memorable times in that city."