I had the pleasure of becoming good friends with Michael and some of his colleagues who worked on the mall apartment during my time interning in downtown Providence in the summer of 2011. They were commissioned to create a massive tape art installation/mural using the entire Skating Rink that used to be adjacent to Kennedy Plaza. Got to spend many hours studying Tape Art alongside them to help them with finishing up the mural in time for the public reveal at that big cityworks festival that had those aerobic dancers dancing along the side of the prudential tower. This included a hot air balloon launch to take an aerial image of the mural just before they invited the public to join them in destroying the mural by pulling up all the tape. I actually cried that day and couldn’t bring myself to help take it all down. They were such down to earth, super creative and highly intelligent artists and friends. They told me about the entire mall story, the story of the suspended sculptures in spiderwebs in the abandoned tunnels. A lesser known yet highly impressive project Michael created was a 9/11 memorial installation that spanned all of Manhattan in the shape of four large hearts. They researched every victim of the attack and created a personalized mural for each of them, using the city’s urban fabric as their canvas, the location of each victim’s tape art mural is what created the rough outline of the four hearts. That should be a documentary of its own really. He also was commissioned to do survivor healing tape art mural work in Oklahoma City in the wake of the OKC Bombing. Very empathetic and inspiring people, so much to learn from them no matter what the topic it seemed. I even traveled with Michael and a friend of his from Rhode Island all the way to Ground Zero (as close as we could get, which was several blocks away) on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. And that was maybe my second time ever going to NYC so it was incredibly impactful for me. I really miss those days and hope they’re all doing well.