Typical Rimrock and Desert Scenery

Introducing my latest book project and most recent paper lava rock processing: Typical Rimrock and Desert Scenery.

This book came about because I was invited to participate in a show called Ideation by Chance, opening today at the Seager Gray Gallery's Book Room.

Parameters set forth for this exhibition are based on an ideation technique my former instructor Barb Tetenbaum developed - that of pulling a set of prompts from a hat, thus allowing the structure and content of the book to be dictated by chance.

My directives were:
Imagery: none
Structure: unbound
Text: self-generated
Layout: minimal
Color: primary
Technical: mixed media
Paper: pre-printed/recycled
Describe: abstract
Adjectives: obvious, mosaic, traditional, encyclopedic, whimsical

This is the third time I've used the same rock imagery; each time the plates are transformed or broken up in a further processing of the material. For this book, in answer to the prompt 'mosaic,' I cut up some of the polymer plates used to print Lava Field and printed them in simple mosaic patterns.

I found this funky graph paper culled from a machine shop several years ago which satisfied the pre-printed and recycled paper directive. For the text I pulled out my old trusty typewriter. I was thrilled to find the ribbon still had life in it, I don't think I've used it for 10 years!

The book is made up of 20 folios that simply lay loosely on top of one another. Each folio has a numbered piece of text, but readers may go through them in any order. The pages are housed in a hard-case cover with a simple slip case inside to contain them.

So there it is, Typical Rimrock and Desert Scenery. The title, by the way, comes from photo caption found in a book about the high desert of Central Oregon written by Raymond Hatton, a long-time professor at Central Oregon Community College. The words seemed so comically dismissive of a subject matter the author was so obviously enthusiastic about, I've adopted it and taken it on for several projects.

And now, I'm off into the typical moss and rainforest scenery.