Valerie Salez

Ditch It, 2004
Artist's Statement

As a kid the Alaska Highway had no historical beginning or end. It was all just 'stretches', bumps and ditches. We referred to the ditches as "the armpits of the highway." The Alaska Highway ditches were no-man's-land. Comparable to abandon islands, ditches were fertile ground for unencumbered exploration. The possibility of discovering treasure and examining roadkill made ditch-combing more alluring than a day at the park. The imagined tall tales and stories that a ditch "find" could entice, drew me out of the seemingly mundane life of a roadside northerner. The "finds" displayed in Ditch It represent a fictional collection of what I recall finding in the Alaska Highway ditches of my childhood or, at least, what I remember wanting to find.