Mining the West: Primary Elements

I designed and produced this print in response to the invitation received from the curators of the Mining the West Digital Exhibition. Deeply Dependent is a physical exploration of materials and processes and a conceptual investigation of the materials we remove to sustain our technologically advanced practices and ways of living. The image of the strip mine is loosely based on photographs of the Bingham Canyon Mine, found in the historical, digital collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library and elsewhere on the web to gain contemporary perspective. I printed the initial layer using an experimental monoprinting technique, which required a laborious removal of ink from the wasteland of a Plexiglas base. I repeated the physical extraction of the ink for each copy, echoing the scores of years of mining at this site. I pulled the second run from a linoleum block, from which material was removed to produce the image block. Again, I repeated the laborious, partial removal of ink for each copy of the print, discarding the waste material (newsprint) as part of the process. The message of deep dependency is set in Gothic sans wood type.