Vegetations
2018 - 2019
This signed limited-edition book consists of seven prints, each with poetry handwritten on top of and around the prints.
My starting point in developing the compositions in this book was the astonishing world of vegetation that surrounds us. I began by looking carefully at and then taking photographs of this vegetal world. The differences and similarities between that world and our human world triggered thoughts and feelings in me about the relationship of us humans to the wider world of existing and living things. Through imagery and poetry I explored, developed, and attempted to express these thoughts and feelings.
I developed and produced the seven compositions of this book over the course of two years, starting in the summer of 2017 and concluding in the summer of 2019. I printed each composition in my Massachusetts studio using an Epson 9800 printer printing on a heavyweight Hahnemühle Photo Rag 500 gsm paper. Both the imagery and poetry are original.
The book is deliberately large, with each page 24” x 24”. The pages are heavy and large. The covers are heavy and large, even crude, consisting of exposed paper board and untreated canvas, with the rough edges of the board visible and extending beyond the canvas. The size, heft, and material crudeness of the book change our perception of it as “book”. We touch it, feel its textures, labor to turn its large, heavy pages, and it ceases to feel to us like “book” and begins to feel to us like “object”. This unusual perspective disorients us in a way analogous to the disorientation that happens, and that I try to express, when we deeply and openly consider the dominance and otherness of the vegetal world.
The poetry of each composition is either handwritten, printed, or both. I wrote the hand-written portions of the poetry using inks I mixed to achieve specific colors. In one case I used pencil.
The compositions of the book appear in the book in the order in which they were developed. This temporal sequencing reflects the sequence of development of my thoughts and feelings.
Copies of the book are available for purchase at $1700 each. For more information, contact me.
Click the thumbnails below to see each image in detail along with its poetry.
