Steel Sandcastles
Shannon Blake

People live in Gary. The history and present state of the city may attract academic curiosity
and the interest of outsiders, but people still live in Gary. Downtown buildings given over to opportunistic
grasses and steel mills on the shore are the setting of everyday normalcy.
Massive steel and concrete structures can feel like the most impersonal and static xtures; the antithesis
of the everyday motion of biological life. However these industrial installations retain and develop
elements of their origins from humanness- especially as succession overtakes them.
Straight lines and sharp corners are not as far removed as one might think from
the lines and forms of nature.
The architectural becomes human. The industrial becomes organic.
~Shannon Blake