Tree Collaborations
November 13, 2016
Tree Portraits: Postcards. 2006
November 13, 2016
In 2008 I spent two weeks in Denali National Park at mile 41 as part of the National Park Service Artist in Residence Program. Each day during my residency, I created a tiny book to represent the day’s experience. This built on my regular visual diary process, but in a slightly different way. These little books are also part of a National Parks Online Exhibit. You can see my work here.

I also picked a word to represent each day, which I stenciled onto a card.

During these two weeks I grabbled with the idea of wilderness. I thought I understood what it meant to be in the wild. I had read Thoreau. I had no idea what true wilderness was. Denali is the size of my home state Massachusetts, but with only one 60 mile road going into it. The rest is completely unpopulated by humans. Encounters with grizzlies are common.

Once I returned from Alaska, I transformed the images from the books and the text into collages, which I used as pressure prints for another artist book.

Alaska Book-A-Day

Alaska Book-A-Day Covers

 

Alaska Book-A-Day

Alaska Book-A-Day

Alaska Word-A-Day

Alaska Word-A-Day