Artist Jonathan Brand’s “Island of Despair” project is a 48″ x 52″ x 20″ tank, within which a sailboat is consumed and submerged in 200 gallons of water but it is not adrift. Anchored at farthest mast to the base of the tank, the vehicle becomes an island in a larger context. Upturned and anchored, the boat is now an island, subsumed into a system greater than itself. The concept comes from a proposal Brand made, as a finalist for a travel fellowship, to build a sailboat and sail the North Atlantic coast to Canada when my visa expired.