[See a PDF of the entire book here.]

we had something is a unique artist's book featuring text in brush calligraphy on a semi-translucent washi paper:

"we had / something / beautiful / and we / still do / don't we?"

Nested inside the folded, double leaves of each page is an obscured image. Each recto image is a Google Maps screen capture of the site of a major environmental catastrophe, manipulated in Photoshop to create a full-bleed abstract image in unnatural colors: pictured sites include Three Mile Island; Picher, Oklahoma; Bhopal, India, and others. Each verso image is a smaller, casual snapshot of some minor natural beauty. I burned the pages with a soldering iron, each page featuring one more burn than the previous one had.

When I originally formulated the text, I thought the book would be a broad, ironic look at the universal human tendency toward nostalgia. Instead, it became a more pointed record of amassed environmental degradation.

2016
11” x 13”
14 pp.
stab binding
brush calligraphy with inkjet printed images and burn marks
unique book

SOLD