Piper Bast is a recent Pima Community College graduate and current student. She explores various art mediums, most recently working in sculpture. Persephone’s Memory is one of her first finished works at this scale and in three-dimensions. Begun as part of independent study, it grew into a significant public art project. The creation of the piece ebbed and flowed through the pandemic lockdown and came together in response to its challenges. Persephone became a voice for Bast during difficult times: “She has been the only constant in the dumpster fire that is 2020. The frustrating conditions forced me to adapt and improvise in ways I couldn’t have imagined a year ago.” Bast continues, “She and I are not conventionally or ideally beautiful, but we are survivors. Hopefully soon our lives and the earth itself, like the mythical Persephone, will make the journey from The Underworld and be renewed like spring with its flowers.”