Site Gallery Houston • The Silos • Sawyer Yards
T H E W O R K
Still is a site-specific installation inside a concrete silo that once stored rice for decades. A poem lives on its walls, handmade, fragile, embedded with seeds. Visitors are invited to take a letter home. What happens next is the work.
The walls of this silo held grain for decades. Some two hundred and fifty workers swept out the last rice in 2008 before the building closed. Their names were not recorded. The walls held the weight. The walls still do.
What surrounds you is a poem — written letter by letter in handmade rice straw pulp, cast by hand, embedded with seeds of native Texas plants. The fiber comes from the same crop that passed through these walls. The seeds belong to the bayou ecosystem that existed here long before the grain, before the concrete, before any of this was built.
You are invited to take a letter from the wall. Each letter you take carries seeds. Plant it in soil. What once grew here can grow again. When no more letters remain, the words will still be here — held by the wall that has always held things.
Taking is how this poem ends. It is also how it continues. Those are not the same thing.
"Where the letter was, light remains. Not as absence.
As answer."
P L A N T THE L E T T E R F A C I N G U P
T H E S E E D E D L E T T E R S
T H E S E E D S
Bee Happy Mix · Native American Seed · Junction, TX
What might Grow
-
Bluebonnet
-
Black-Eyed Susan
-
Indian Blanket
-
Butterfly Weed
-
Purple Coneflower
-
Common Sunflower
-
Gayfeather
-
Winecup
-
Lemon Mint
-
Swamp Milkweed
How to Plant
01 Find bare soil in a sunny outdoor spot
02 Dig a hole just deep enough to cover the letter
03 Place face down — seeds touching the soil
04 Cover lightly with soil
05 Water gently until sprouts appear
Best Time
October - November
Forgot? Keep it dry. Plant it next October.
Why native seeds?
Native plants feed local bees, butterflies, and birds in ways imported plants cannot. They need less water, no fertilizer, and they belong to this soil. One letter in a thousand front yards, sidewalk strips, and garden beds might start something.
T H E P O E M • S T I L L
Before this wall
this wall held grain.
Before the grain, a bayou.
Before the bayou,
roots no one remembers naming.
Five hundred hands
swept out the last grains of rice.
No one recorded their names.
The walls held the weight.
The walls still do.
A vessel that holds grief.
A letter that holds a seed.
Different hands.
Different soil.
Different light.
These walls once held grain.
Now, they hold light.
Take a letter.
Bring roots...
to the light.
That is the gift.
Where the letter was,
light remains —
not as absence.
As answer.
This poem will empty.
The wall will speak in light.
The seeds will be set free.
The work continues, in you.
Leave a thought, share a photo of what grew, or tell us where you planted your letter.