I had never been to Poland before.  So I decided to make one trip to get familiar with the space, discover what is available and begin the process of production.  While traveling on the bus from Warsaw to Lodz, the journey kept reminding me of earlier China trips. I arrived at Lodz without any supplies or specific plan.  I was looking for something to create from local materials for a site specific installation.  I wanted to invent or adopt a local plant and create a forest environment that combined aspects of the community, my own aesthetics and a form of commentary on the relationship of nature and humans.

The space was overwhelming yet it had a similar feeling to my studio in Brooklyn. We went out to look for materials and arrived at a store that reminded me of Home Depot in America.   There I found and purchased materials that were familiar and started working on the site right away.  After two days of working with these materials,
I am coming up with a method / process to my installation. However I realized more definition was needed for the forms and inquired about paper making facilities.  The Artist Book Museum down the street from the site offered the generous use of their Hollander Beater. I used local newspaper to create the pulp and it seemed to work.  At this point I also discovered an abundance of leftover paper and fabric from the former Uniontex factory for possible inclusion. We beat up leftover bills forms and receipts from the former factory into pulp with some pigment which become the branches of the piece. I started experimenting with the brightly colored patterned fabrics to turn them into leaves. I based the shape of the leaf on a local birch tree, the locals told me is called a lipa.  And thus the Lodz Vine with lipa leaves began to grow.