EXCURSIONS
Pulling the first pass .
Recently I got hold of my great-grandmother ’ s diary from the early 1900s . She and her husband traveled across the U . S . from Oregon to Florida and back again . Because my family had taken several cross-continental trips , I was drawn to her writing to learn about the places they stayed , the culture of the time , the cost of fuel and lodging . Her diary was the inspi-ration for a new series . I next stumbled upon John Cage ’ s smoke prints made in the ‘ 90s , his
River Rocks and Smoke : 4-11-90 # 1 held a par-ticular fascination . He drew around rocks then built a fire on a lithographic press which created the smoke . They ’ ll be no fire in my studio , but I loved the translucency he achieved with the smoke . Rocks are symbolic as they hold the earth ’ s memories deep within their forms . Their color , shape , texture , form , size — an infinite number of qualities that rocks possess — draw me to them .
To begin the piece , I scanned pages of the diary and went hunting for just the right rocks . I printed the pages on 26 x 20 Rives BFK on an Epson 7600 inkjet printer using archival inks . Each print was pulled four or five times from the palette .
After making a few prints , I discovered they ’ d work best as a group , hanging freely with light behind the prints . The installation , titled Excursions , is comprised of twelve 26 x 20 prints . The translucency of the paper
Rocks and paper templates .