Artist’s Journal:

I worked in government long before I ever got this gig as the Artist in Residence, and I remember on my last day, the manager said to me, “You must know you just never fit in here, right?” She was right: I didn’t. I had come to that job after a decade spent in social work, where we did wild and impossible things every day for our communities. There was never a hurdle we couldn’t jump, a system we couldn’t jig to get clients the help they needed. I was an advocacy warrior. I was used to working with zero dollars and sweat equity to make fast, meaningful change.

Working in government is nothing like this.

It was a culture shock for me, when I first had that job many years ago. This time, working with government departments, I felt like was ready. I knew changes would be slow and incremental. But it still felt like I was drowning.

I spent six months interviewing and touring the department, after which I produced a report full of ideas on how we could create greater impact and change for the city. And I knew that most of it would never be initiated. This is not a failing of the people, nor the department; it is the very nature of government that change moves at a snail’s pace, and can only be attempted in small steps. Government is essentially creation by consensus, which is the slowest and less efficient way of doing anything…but that is what happens when you’re responsible for managing a system that supports nearly a million people.

There were times of deep frustration during my tenure. It goes against my very nature to stand still when a solution is just a few steps ahead. But what really hit me was realizing that these bureaucratic barriers are happening everywhere on the planet at the same time. All over the world, there are people trying to solve the waste crisis and meeting with bureaucracy. And I do believe that if this doesn’t change, we will not be able to save ourselves in time.