erika nelson
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Texas-Sized Road Trip Diorama of Wonder
 2025

Recycled tires, Astroturf, laminated particleboard, corrugated cardboard, paper mache, found objects, reclaimed lumber

70’ x 60’ x 6’
The Orange Show Foundation in Houston Texas, caretakers of Jeff McKissack’s singular artist-built environment “The Orange Show”, hosted artist Erika Nelson as the 2025 Artist in Residence. Over the course of three weeks, Erika and a crew of volunteers built a tribute to Texas roadside attractions, in a form of truly Texan proportions. Starting with a canvas ‘painting’ of Texas to map out the 60’ x 60’ footprint, the Lone Star State was then cut apart along its interstate roadways, with the resulting maze-like pathways serving as a blueprint for the building of a topographic walk-through Texas. 

At the Gulf coast, one low layer of used tires (donated from Houston’s active and colorful area tire recyclers) formed a base layer for the low-lying surface plane, with the tire piles ramping up to five and six tires high as the Western elevations grew. In all, 786 tires were used in the construction of the Texas topography elevations, lending both texture and authentic road smell to the installation.

These base layers were then topped with custom cut laminated boards, reinforcing the roadway contours criss-crossing the state. Once the entirety of Texas was complete, Astroturf (a product originally created for Houston’s Astrodome) circles marked locations for the most important features: Texas roadside attractions, built by community members. Throughout the project, Erika and the Orange Show hosted a series of workshops, introducing volunteers to the vibrant built structures dotting Texas roadways, and demonstrating quick-build construction techniques and paper mache methods. 

From there, a core set of volunteers met in the evenings, creating trophy-sized replicas to populate the roadsides. While the core set of mini-monuments were installed just hours before the Texas-Sized Roadtrip Diorama of Wonder opened to the public, visitors continued creating monuments to add to the Diorama throughout the exhibition timeline.

Documentation of the project will be compiled into a mini-documentary on the Orange Show Foundation’s YouTube page, and the show was features on Texas Highways.