Organized as if it were an aerial view of a downtown urban sprawl, the title of the piece derives from the lines formed by streets, highways, and bridges that cut through every metropolis.The artist focuses on what is tucked away, hidden in the bowels ofthe city, invisible to casual passers-by. Beneath the orderly and serene exterior lies a much more unsettling reality—the indigent and the displaced, suffering the brunt of social deterioration inescapable to any city Dial represents these unheard voices with bent paint-can lids, which, stripped from their original places and carelessly cast aside, serve as an appropriate metaphor for the city's homeless. Dial's inspiration for the work came from a trip to New York in late 1990, when he encountered widespread homelessness, a phenomenon different from anything he had seen before in his small southern hometown. Dial's message is simple and clear: What you see on the surface is often a cover for the secrets that lie beneath.
