Union 060719

Based in western North Carolina since the early 1990s, Haley grew up on a farm in rural Kansas, in an area where abandoned and rusting farm machinery was a common sight. In reference to *Union 060719*, Haley states, “Whenever I go back to Kansas, I see the decay—there are fewer grain elevators, there are fewer farmsteads, if they are occupied at all there’s a double-wide sitting next to the farm that’s falling in. These are monuments to that history.” This work is part of a larger series titled *Correction Lines*. The series references the federal Public Land Survey, initiated in 1785, that aimed to divide all public land west of the Appalachian Mountains into six-mile-square parcels and also enabled federal “land grabs” that are being contested to this day. “Correction lines” are the east-west latitude points where the federal surveyors had to reorient their measurements, slightly shifting the plot lines every 24 miles to account for the natural curvature of the earth. In reference to the original land surveyors’ “correction line” solution, Haley says, “They could have had a complex system of trapezoids and for every point closer to the pole, there would be a percentage shift, but I love the idea that some guy said, let’s just shift the square a bit. I think that’s indicative of how I work every day.” *Union 060719* is comprised of two rectangular prisms that have been vertically stacked on top of each other. The ends of each prism that meet have been tapered into rounded shapes. This sculpture is a perfect representation of the “correction lines” that inspired it.