“What’da ya mean they’re going to tear it all down?” Kari was yelling. She was always yelling. It echoed in the open warehouse workspace they rented.

Paul shrugged. “That’s what the man said.”

“We worked for months on that installation!” She kept yelling.

“Was always a risk, we knew some one had to own that lot.” Carter stopped sorting broken bits of tile long enough to join the conversation. His braces made his S’s linger on his tongue.

Kari wheeled and turned her fury on him. “I can’t believe you’re defending them! It’s art! We took an abandoned junk filled lot and made it something beautiful!”

“Yeah, and we did it using the junk we found in that lot.” Carter tossed a chip of blue tile into a pile with a similar hue. “And I’m not defending them. I’m just not angry at them for doing their jobs.”

“Sure sounds like it…philistine.” She said the last word under breath, just loud enough for everyone to hear it.

“Enough,” cut in Paul. “We’ve had pieces taken down before. We’ll just find some place new. Make again. Make it better. Until one day they won’t be able to tear it down.

Memphis Note
In the past few years there have been a few guerrilla installation art projects that have popped on or in abandoned spaces in Memphis. Some of them last, most of them get torn down. But no matter how briefly they last, the city is made better for them.