Are You Here? was a public art project consisting of a series of roadside billboards featuring a white background with black text reading, “Are You Here?” This question, which references the phrase “You Are Here” often found on highway rest area maps, was meant to engage passersby on multiple levels. Other than a literal statement regarding geography, the phrase “Are You Here?” is also a metaphysical question meant to encourage motorists to be more fully present and mindful of their experience when they encountered the message. I hoped that the extreme simplicity of these billboards, and the unexplained and unexpected nature of their question, would startle viewers into at least a fleeting moment of “being here.”

Are You Here? was installed on 14 billboards that I rented throughout New England and upstate New York during the summer of 2015. Photographs and video of this work have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont, Gallery Kayafas in Boston, and the South Gallery at Greenfield Community College.

In 2016, I was commissioned by the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum to create a site-specific Are You Here? billboard on the grounds of their sculpture park. The Current in Stowe, Vermont, also commissioned a hand-painted billboard during the summer of 2021 as part of their summer exhibition, Exposed 2021.