Mining the West: Primary Elements

Volume 1: Gift for Megan Pettit
Pigment extensions of twelve ochre bodies from the San Rafael Swell.

Volume 2: Ochre is Life
Digital GIF made from images of letterpress prints marked with Ochre in gum arabic. Each ‘X’ marks a relationship to the geological strata of the Swell. The Ochre stills alternate to spell out the phrase “Ochre is Life” in binary code. The stills were printed on strathmore cotton rag on a Vandercook No. 3 with rubber based ink using a photopolymer plate.

Volume 3: Gift for Heidi Gustafson
Handbound book, printed on strathmore cotton rag on a Vandercook No. 3, then saturated with Ochre pigment extensions in gum arabic binder.

The Pink Moon Atlas is a product of Unknown Prospect: a body of work surveying so-called public lands and sites of industrial mining through Ochre pigments, design research, printmaking, and artist’s books. My practice in printmaking and book binding, combined with architectural training in documents and drawing, have led to an interest in maps/atlases as products of information, communication, narrative, and world-making. I wonder if these products can lead to design ethics and practices that prioritize the relation between human and more-than-human. As alternatives to conventional, colonial mapping practices in the United States, products of Unknown Prospect are emergent with observations from experience, divergent technologies, and multiplicities generated by Ochre on the page. The Ochre bodies in the Pink Moon Atlas were assembled during field visits to mining sites in the San Rafael Swell before and after the Pink Moon of 2021.

More about Elpitha Tsoutsounakis

Elpitha Tsoutsounakis (she/her) is a Cretan-American designer, printer, and educator based in so-called Salt Lake City, Utah. She is an Assistant Professor and founding faculty in the Division of Multi-disciplinary Design at the University of Utah where she teaches design studios, research methods, and visual strategy. As a first-generation college student raised in an immigrant family she completed her B.S. Architecture at the University of Utah and her M.Arch at the University of Texas at Austin. Her education in architecture informs design research and creative practice engaging issues of design ethics, materiality, ecofeminism, and the human relationship to the more-than-human. She established the Fieldwork Platform to bring together diverse community partners involved in so-called public lands through interdisciplinary design research, education, and publication.

For an introduction to Unknown Prospect see the film: Tools for an Unknown Prospect (Elpitha Tsoutsounakis, “Tools for an Unknown Prospect,” YouTube video, 10 minutes, July 19, 2021).