I live in a small town of 5000 people, so it feels like the whole town is my neighbourhood. My direct surroundings consist of detached family homes. The lot sizes are generous with green spaces between houses and lots of nice gardens, trees, and small unkempt wilderness areas.

What I found most astonishing when we moved here is that people here don’t use fences much to mark their property boundaries. Only open pools are required to have fences for safety reasons. This makes for a kind of open plan neighbourhood. This also means that people and wildlife traverse freely. Yes, we have people walk through our backyard, because it can be used as a shortcut between two roads. Yes, I walk through other people’s property at times because it is convenient. The deer that roam here walk through the gardens unhindered, crossing streets, walking this way and that just as they please. Ditto for other wildlife, like skunks and raccoons. Once I saw a fox resting in our yard for hours, and no, we do not live next to the woods. Especially in the winter, with snow on the ground, you see all the tracks that crisscross the yard.

This freedom of movement is fascinating to me. Growing up in Germany, where space is at a premium, this was much different. Everyone fences in their small plot and  free access would be unthinkable. This openness appeals to me a lot. It feels like people share a common space, and it also leads to neighbourly contact. One of our neighbours cut down a diseased tree on our property once (after talking to us), because nobody really knew where the boundary exactly is and whose tree it was.

I want to work with this: the open space between the houses, the tracks in winter, the absence of fences. Let’s see where it leads me. Here is a sneak peek at some wild painted fabric I would like to use: