Thoughtful conversations with the people of Maine

To love your city is flaws included. And I would say that's even the first step to fully understanding and appreciating where you live and also facing reality and seeing where improvements can be made.

There literally was no housing in the city of Portland or where there was a limited amount of housing for folks like that, that didn't qualify for the subsidies and couldn't afford the market rate housing. And so as I was at the planning board, and there was a lot of discussion on the state level, a municipal level about this missing middle and the workforce housing, nobody was doing anything about it.

I decided to do something a little bit more personal, a little bit more individual, and create this sculpture called Defender of a figure representing Ukraine as a whole or as an individual Ukrainian soldier, given the yellow arm band protecting the Sunflower, which is the national flower of Ukraine.