Martin King

Subject: Martin King is a water pipeworker with four years at SPU. "You just gotta get up and keep on doing it."  Artist Statement: All of us adjusted to an abrupt braking to life's velocity, a breaking of our ordinary patterns, and uncertainty. While I was, thankfully, sheltered at home and healthy, the toll from COVID-19 swelled. Beyond the shock of this global phenomenon, the continued violence against Black lives, and trans lives, and Indigenous lives, and our environment punctuated the summer with restlessness and grief. We take so much for granted, I think. Like water. I could turn on my faucet and count on clean water pouring out. It is treated and pumped, without pause, from one of the several reservoirs across the city. I was home. But someone - they, too, living through this pandemic of disease and injustice - went to work each day to ensure that my and your essential needs were met.