Abandon 01, archival pigment print on baryta with acrylic pen, 96" x 24". Edition of three plus one AP.
Abandon
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Abandon is a mixed media art project that elegizes the coal industry in the rural American West, while more broadly examining the relationship between human society and the landscapes we irrevocably impact. As coal mines and their attendant plants shutter across the region, the rail lines that transported the black rock are often also closed, and the hopper cars that held the coal are sidelined, functionally abandoned in remote, often starkly beautiful landscapes. These strands of empty vessels are left as scars of humanity’s “progress”.
What
fingers
can we
have left
to wag
which
do not still
shimmer
with your
black dust?
Abandon 02, archival pigment print on baryta with acrylic pen, 38” x 24”. Edition of three plus one AP.
Abandon comprises a series of large-scale photographs of sidelined coal hopper cars in central Utah. I camped on public land there to wait for the sunlight to turn the Roan Plateau to flame. I composed a poem with a structure confined by the shape of the coal cars, then hand wrote the poem onto the photographic print, so that the words interact with the cars like the graffiti painted onto their sides. In this way the poem becomes a literal touch of humanity in the landscape.
Abandon 03, archival pigment print on baryta, 55" x 24". Edition of three, plus one AP.
It is undoubtedly a necessary and positive movement to shift our energy dependency from relying on coal to utilizing more efficient and cleaner forms of energy. During this shifting time, I want to remember and acknowledge the communities who gave their lives over generations to power the growth of the region. Even as we abandon it, we all must acknowledge that coal has touched every one of us. There is not one among us who can wag a finger that’s not coated in fine black dust.