'March Forth' Walk, 12 of 15

This piece is number twelve of fifteen from my March Forth walk—a 120-mile journey through the freguesia of Estômbar e Parchal in Portugal. “ Living on the road, my friend...is going to keep you free and clean." This is an adapted quote from Townes Van Zandt's song Pancho and Lefty. In my recovery, I have used 'the road' as my metaphor for spirit. I see the road as representing movement and life. If I keep on, keep with the road, then I stay alive, dynamic, in flux, in the dynamic of life. Things like addictions get me stuck, stop my movement. I also see the road as my mind and mindfulness. If I keep repeating the same thoughts, then I am stuck; I'm going in circles. I call remaining present "walking the road." When you are present, you are with the flux of life again in your mind. It frees and cleans you from the dross of overthinking. Mindfulness feels refreshing to me. The Korean Zen master Seung Sahn said, "Don't Know Only Go Straight." I call this living on the road.

March Forth is a 120-mile walking project completed over 40 hours and more than 250,000 steps. I began by printing fifteen maps of the area. On each one, I drew a continuous line, carefully tracing a route that covered the full length of every street. I then took the maps into the streets and followed those lines exactly as drawn, recording each walk using Strava.
The central theme of the project is sobriety and recovery—an idea embedded in its title. March Forth refers both to the literal act of walking and to the decision to move forward in life. It reflects a conscious step out of addiction and into growth. Created after nearly two years of sobriety, the work is driven by renewed vitality and hope. Its purpose is to encourage and inspire those who wish to live sober but cannot yet see a way forward.
While walking, I reflected on recovery. During periods of rest, I read frontier poetry and interpreted it through that same lens. After thirty years of drug and alcohol use, sobriety feels like stepping into unknown territory. From these reflections emerged fifteen sentences and corresponding graffiti-mural concepts, each painted along the route.
The artworks presented here are created directly on the original maps used during the walk. They are not separate from the journey—they were both guide and companion. Each map physically carries the experience within it: dirt, rain, creases, and wear accumulated over 120 miles. The finished pieces are informed by the graffiti executed along the way and aim to transmit a fragment of that lived experience.
Philosophically, the project functions as a praxis—a lived application of its theme. Having established sobriety, I chose to focus on recovery as renewed growth. Substance use can arrest development. You get stuck in many patterns and stuck in place. For this project, I wanted to break free of ruts and do new things. I did this in two ways.
First, I created two new characters. Camina represents the Road—movement, freedom, love, and life. Her name feminizes camino by shifting the ending to “a,” and as a verb in Spanish, camina means “walk on.” The second character is Bastion. A bastion is a fortified wall; he represents obstruction, confinement, and the forces that prevent movement. The word shares its root with the Bastille in Paris, the prison stormed during the French Revolution—a symbol of both confinement and uprising.
Second, I expanded my artistic practice by incorporating scene drawing and by working with rollers, paintbrushes, and house paint—materials and methods new to me at the time.
Each work is made on 250gsm Navigator hard-cover paper and executed with acrylic markers.
Comes with a linocut print on black cardstock and 10 stickers. 8 of the stickers are full color hand made stickers done on two different kinds of USPS postal stickers each with its own sentence. One sticker is a handmade linocut on a USPS label with hand done sentence. One sticker is an eggshell sticker. And one is a little card with and hand done sentence.