Original Ink Illustration - Desert, Unring a Bell

Archival ink on watercolor paper

Signed, 1/1

Includes hand-cut window mat
Mat dimensions - 11.5" x 16"

From the series "Unring a Bell," exhibited at Hi-Desert Community Darkroom Gallery in Yucca Valley, CA, 2022.

Over two years’ time in the Mojave desert, I have become increasingly attuned to the many covert dump sites and vacant structures that litter the landscape. Seemingly endless swaths of creosote and sand are, upon closer inspection, interrupted by massive holes dug into the earth and filled with construction waste, the contents of abandoned buildings spilling out and carried off by wind, and piles of everyday garbage swept into washes by flash floods. Today, the immaculate high desert is an illusion – the waste that mars its surface points to a critical dialogue between human and Earth, and the dynamics of the desert reflected in time.

"Unring a Bell" features a body of archival silver gelatin and pigment prints, as well as pen-and-ink illustrations, originally printed in a self-published book of the same title. In this work I explore human impact on desert landscapes, and play with imagery and characters lovingly borrowed from the popular television shows Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Imagined as a condensed 'before and after' or 'cause and effect' view of industrialization, the series visits the high deserts of California and New Mexico at various points in time - from operational laboratory to abandoned wasteland.