cloud atlas Artist Book (2019)

cloud atlas began with ideas of capturing cloud images in numerous places where I travelled not as travel notes but rather the idea that the clouds had no boundaries and moved as vibrant matter throughout the atmosphere shifting in form and muscularity. This mutable landscape sails far above the politically determined borders, the longitude and latitude of colonies, wars, and the evidence of climate change below. As my unsorted collection grew so did the idea of an atlas. Here I saw in my imagination that each image would be folded like a map and enclosed together in a formal binding.  The next step was sorting through my collection of cloud images to intuitively decide what would be included and what would be excluded. In this archival process I began to consider print methods and eventually settled on diazo printing, a blueprint process.  As I was completing this artist book, I stumbled upon a poem by Susan Stewart “The Map of the World Confused with Its Territory” The poem like my atlas responds to the current disasters of war, borders, and refugees; thus, “the map of the world is an orphanage” with “fraying edges.”[i]. At this juncture I handprinted a diazo copy of the poem, folded it like the cloud maps and added it as a loose insert…a cloud of text.

cloud atlas, 2018 artist book, 13 folded like a map diazo prints
20.32cm x 20.32cm folded, unfolded map 91.44 h x 91.44 w edition 3, 1/3
collection of the artist

[i]Susan Stewart, “The Map of the World Confused with Its Territory,” The Hive, 1987. (Atlanta: The University of Georgia Press, 1987), 47.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47967/the-map-of-the-world-confused-with-its-territory