This interview is part of Anchor Editorial, a collaboration between Sixty Inches From Center and Anchor Curatorial Residency. This five-part series is co-created and written by Carlos Flores, this year’s Curatorial Resident, and Tiffany M. Johnson, who co-designed the residency with the Chicago Park District and was Anchor’s 2022 Curatorial Resident. Together, they will be publishing conversations with fellow curators, artists, and collaborators, as well as experimental essays and archive dives that explore the topics that impact their curatorial practices.

To read this article in Spanish, click here.

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This poem grew from my time at Marquette Park as the most recent Anchor Curatorial Resident. Spanning 323 acres, it is the largest public park on Chicago’s Southwest Side, holding histories as deeply as it holds its lush, varied landscapes. During the residency, I came to see the park as more than a physical site—it is a living record of migration and resistance, layered with the energies of those who’ve walked, fought, and dreamed there. Over two years of relational work, I engaged with the park as both a question and an answer, a site of tension and renewal. What The Soil Carries reflects this project, tracing the weight of its soil and the futures it dares to imagine. Through workshops, conversations, curated interventions on the landscape, and public programs, I witnessed how Marquette functions as a living archive, where stories, memories, and materials intersect to inspire new possibilities.

I.  Redlines and Marigolds¹

Beneath the particulate sky,
Marquette hums like a static line,
fractured at the edges of Kedzie’s exhaust.

Here, marigold petals drop in semaphore,
their coded whispers reach no one but the soil.
This is not a park—
it is a ledger, a dream deferred,²

“Take a magnifying glass,”
Evelyn says to the children—
“Find the pulse of the lagoon.”

They crouch low, emerald reflections wrapping them,³
as dragonfly larvae script futures
that no city plan could imagine.

Wheelbarrows creak under quiet weight,
heavy with charged material.
“Food & Drink BY US, FOR US,”
the façade declares at an indifferent horizon.

Destiny’s shadow is long,
a sundial over a history
of crossings, crossings again,
and boundaries that refuse erasure.

II. Marching Through the Archive

Marquette is an archive,
a library of green spaces where friction meets freedom,⁴
a stage for what has come before:
the march of feet in ’66,
Dr. King leading a tide demanding
the promise of home,
the right to breathe freely where they belonged.

The chants of desegregation reverberated through the soil,
mixing with the susurrus of willows
that watched the city crack open.
But not all fractures are ruinous;
some are fault lines for seeds to take root.

Jeers hung thick in the air,
diesel fumes that still haunt the South Side,
but those voices of defiance,
a steady rhythmic coalescence—
they are etched into the soil.

Even now, the lawn holds that history close,
transforming resistance into rootings
that stretch beneath re-wilding efforts,
becoming a pulse,
a living archive for all who walk here.

III. Stay Away From the Poemless

“Stay away from the poemless,” a sign commands,
“they will tell you your future.”⁵

But the future is a neon OPEN sign,
lit against quiet violence.

Youth run through Destiny’s Grab N’ Go,⁶
Play stitches the wound
where the asphalt once cracked open.

We measure the park’s breath in steps:
ceremonial dancers carve glyphs into the lawn,
their feathers reaching upward, antennas
searching for a signal.⁷

The drums speak of other frequencies,
other times—
“Here lies what they tried to bury.”

This is no open field,
no soft expanse of green—
it is a palimpsest.

The dancers kneel, hands pressed into the dirt,
as if trying to listen
to what the soil will not say.

IV. The Lagoon’s Algorithm

The lagoon glitches in sunlight,
its ripples warp as corrupted code.

The surface is scooped
for micro-invertebrates,
tiny compilers of the unseen.

What is real?
The magnifying glass distorts,
but so do the eyes—

The air hums, not with birdsong,
but the drone of logistics hubs and Amazon distribution centers
and diesel arteries cutting through the Southwest.

“Find what breathes beneath,”
Evelyn whispers,
as nets sweep the water’s skin.⁸

In each jar, a fragment of the park’s database—
mayflies, beetles, larval futures.⁹

The lagoon’s affective output is “Rest,”
but unrest is stitched in the reeds,
restlessness in every drop of silt.

V. Collage as Resistance

Inside the fieldhouse,
tables brim with fragments—¹⁰

Paper torn, 

glue spread,
scissors cutting 

through source—
a bird takes flight, its wings sharp as a manifesto.¹¹

Hands moving with precision,
cutting new languages from detritus.

Bee’s voice rises above the room:
“Every piece you cut is a story,
every paste is a connection.”

The makers laugh, their masks slipping
as they lean over their work,
their calloused hands crafting portals.

And the fieldhouse walls remember—
echoes of meetings, hushed councils,
decades of pleas spoken to callous boards and CDOT.¹²

The air clings like damp fabric,
steam-powered heat fusing with the constant churn of bodies in motion,
like a second skin pressing against the lungs.

VI. Portable Futures

Wheelbarrows roll again,¹³
each a hybrid altar,
each a question without an answer.

They carry the residue of bandit signs,
their polypropylene bodies twisted into resistance.

Once, these signs screamed:
“WE BUY HOUSES—CASH!”
Now, they whisper reclamation,
their yellow skins softening with memory.

On the lawn, the structure rests,
a makeshift ofrenda in motion,
its corrugated skin worn with use.
Bandit signs, once predatory,
are now woven into the sacred

“Where does it go?” hovers.
It moves through the unshaped,
to carry what the present is learning to name.

VII. Ceremony Under the Sulfur Sky

The dancers rise,
their feathers aflame in the last light of the day.

A drum sounds,
its hollow call pulsing on the fieldhouse walls.

“Do you hear it?” one elder asks.
But the question is rhetorical.

This is not the park you think you know.
This is a rehearsal for something larger,
a severing,
a rewriting of the frame.

The crowd watches as if from the edges of a dream.
“Friction meets freedom here,”
someone whispers,
but the voice is swallowed by the drums.

And the façade stands still,
its wheat-pasted skin glowing softly in the dusk.

The haze swirls,
cut through by something unseen,
an insistence against the weight of a city
that forgot how to exhale.

VIII. What the Soil Carries

The soil is not passive—
it holds everything:

marigold seeds,
dancers’ footsteps,
weight of wheelbarrows,
stories whispered in the reeds of the lagoon.

In the end,
the park will not save us.
But it reminds us—
how to listen,
how to rest,
how to rebuild from the ruins of what came before.In the end,
the park will not be a place—
but an invitation to imagine…

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Works Cited

1. Inspired by Amanda Williams’ Redefining Redlining that had the honor of serving as a consultant and thought partner during her residency at Chicago Art Department, where I oversee the residency and exhibitions. In Fall 2022, Williams,with the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative, led an initiative to plant 100,000 red tulip bulbs in Washington Park. These tulips, arranged to trace the footprints of 21 former homes, highlighted the lasting impact of redlining and systemic disinvestment in Black communities. Red tulips served as a marker of loss and a symbol of enduring beauty and potential. Learn more about this project at Redefining Redlining. ↩︎
2. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (University of Missouri Press (BkMk Press), 2002.) ↩︎
3. Macroinvertebrates in Your Local Lagoon workshop with environmental educator and park neighbor Evelyn Alvarez. Photo courtesy of Anchor Curatorial Residency ↩︎
4. Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp, In Search of New Public Domain (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002), argue that public domain is less about a specific location and more about the experience it engenders. They describe it as existing at the intersection of friction and freedom—marked by the tension of encountering unfamiliarity and the freedom of exploring alternative perspectives. These experiences often arise when engaging with the local or community spaces of “others.” ↩︎
5. Diversión’s opening reception with Titus Wonsey’s installation Is This It. An installation by Chicago sound and visual artist Titus Wonsey, as part of the Anchor Curatorial Residency. Serving as a gathering point for community connection and engagement, it dynamically combined words and forms. Speaking like a mouth with cadence, poems, and phrases, the installation highlighted its presence in the community. It acknowledged the transient yet impactful nature of public art, emphasizing its place in the collective songs of the park, community, and history. ↩︎
6. Destiny’s Give N’ Go was an installation by park neighbor Deon Reed and Carlos Flores, presented during the diversión exhibition as part of the Anchor Curatorial Residency. It featured a reimagined storefront facade superimposed on the park lawn, drawing inspiration from businesses along the nearby commercial strip of 63rd. Running east to west, 63rd is the community’s beating artery, encompassing a rich spectrum of cultures and demographics while also bearing the scars of historical redlining. As Chicago Lawn transitions into Englewood, the eastern end of 63rd becomes a food desert marked by shuttered storefronts. This 14-foot facade was an experiment in aesthetic collectivization, inviting local artists and residents from Marquette Park and West Lawn to respond to the prompt: “What futures do you envision for public space?” Submitted 2D works, prints, and other paper-based contributions were wheat-pasted onto the facade, creating a community-driven collage. The project reimagined the visual language of predatory and guerrilla marketing practices prevalent in Black and Brown communities, transforming extractive capitalist modalities into collectively actualized, socially participatory art. Inspired by the vibrant multicultural commerce of the neighborhoods, the installation honored the social and cultural dynamics of 63rd Street. ↩︎
7. Photo of Danza Azteca Xochil-Quetzal performing during the opening ceremony https://www.xochitlquetzal.org/ ↩︎
8. Macroinvertebrates in Your Local Lagoon workshop with environmental educator and park neighbor Evelyn Alvarez. Photo courtesy of Anchor Curatorial Residency (net image) The Anchor Structure at Marquette Park, visible in the background, was a collaboration between the Anchor Curatorial Residency and Human Scale. This civically focused structure provides a platform for neighbors and artists to reclaim public space through both active and passive activations. Designed for long-term community engagement, the structure is intended to support a variety of creative and social interactions over the next five or more years. ↩︎
9. Macroinvertebrates in Your Local Lagoon workshop with environmental educator and park neighbor Evelyn Alvarez. Photo courtesy of Anchor Curatorial Residency (net image) Anchor Structure in the background ↩︎
10. The Creatures Caring for the Land workshop, led by artist and educator Bee Rodriguez, invited participants to explore the intricate relationships between animals, insects, plants, and the land in regions impacted by occupation. Inspired by the Old World Swallowtail Butterfly and other creatures, the workshop included creating mosaic cut-out creatures using collage techniques with construction paper and magazine materials. Originally developed by Briana, Simone, and Bee for the Chicago Park District’s Young Cultural Stewards program, this iteration was presented during diversión, an exhibition curated by Carlos Flores at the Marquette Park Cultural Center as part of the Anchor Curatorial Residency program. Photo courtesy of Anchor Curatorial Residency. ↩︎
11. Ibid. ↩︎
12. Anecdote that Adolfo shared with me about being shut down by boomers from CDOT on traffic safety on Kedzie and Pulaski. ↩︎
13. Porta(til), conceived by mecurator Carlos Flores, is a series of traveling exhibition spaces comprising wooden wheelbarrows that also function as ofrendas. For diversión, Marimacha Monarca Press activated Porta(til) with an installation dedicated to native plants that support monarch butterflies. Their contribution emphasized ecological care and cultural connection, inviting visitors to interact with soil, seeds, and guided reflections. The installation featured a seed library, prints of native plants, cempasúchil (marigolds), and seed bombs representing the monarch butterfly’s life stages. An interactive map directed visitors to native prairie sites within Marquette Park, encouraging seed harvesting as an act of ecological stewardship. Inspired by portable altars used by Spanish missionaries during colonization, Porta(til) subverts this form, turning it into a symbol of placemaking and resistance. The wheelbarrow, reimagined as a site for migration, labor, and heritage, connects themes of displacement and climate migration. Marimacha Monarca Press’ activation aligned deeply with diversión‘s reparative ethos, transforming Porta(til) into a tactile, contemplative space where public art became a portal for ecological engagement and collective healing. ↩︎

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