One shady yard in North Austin has sprouted a garden of memories. Single-stemmed tributes to each Texan lost to the coronavirus.
"These aren’t numbers. These are people’s lives. They’re people’s families and they matter," said Shane Reilly.
Reilly is planting the plastic flags in front of his house on Burbank Street to make a visual statement. “I know it’s frustrating. I know it’s hard. I know that the odds seem low, but there are real people dying and real people being hurt by this,” said Reilly.
For the Austin artist, the hardest part of maintaining the display is erasing one number knowing you’re about to replace it with a bigger one. “When I started this, we were at 973,” said Reilly. “We’re now over 2,300.”
Reilly wants to be able to stop adding flags before they cover his entire front yard.
“I’ve been at this about 8 weeks and I was not expecting it to grow this fast,” said Reilly. "Just today, I just installed 35 more."
The artist says it’s painful to track the number of coronavirus deaths in Texas so closely. But he says the stenciled numbers have become a heart-felt responsibility. “At this point, I don’t feel like I’m trying to make a statement with it. I feel like it belongs to everybody else who is being touched by it and I’m just sort of a caretaker,” said Reilly,
Joanna Fried checks the number every day. “It’s been rapidly growing,” said Fried.
The long-time resident of the Brentwood neighborhood doesn’t consider the yard display political or preachy. “I think it’s a wonderful reminder that we need to stay at home, and we need to wear masks,” said Fried.
Reilly just hopes his yard display will help grow that message before four digits become five. “I don’t think I want to add a fifth digit. Hopefully, I won’t have to,” said Reilly.
The yard display is located at 1912 Burbank Street in North Austin.