Paradise Drive is an original book translated to print, broadside, ebook, video and electronic game.
The original book, which combines my paintings and Rebecca Foust’s sonnets, is entirely handmade. The poems chronicle a quest for purpose in life, including missteps and recovery, and the paintings reflect the subject and tone of the poems. Each sonnet, a form that traditionally occupies fourteen lines, is paired with an original watercolor painting of fourteen strokes. I made fourteen unique copies of Paradise Drive.
I worked with Edition One and Electric Works to develop a digitally reproduced version of the book. Both the original and replicated forms of Paradise Drive are available for purchase here, as well as unique ink and watercolor broadsides of the book pages.
Paradise Drive can be experienced online through the ebook and a series of videos combining the individual strokes of each painting with audio of the accompanying sonnet. Viewers see the fourteen strokes become a painting while listening to the poem read aloud. Here is a link to SF Giants baseball announcer Renel Brooks-Moon reading “Family Grammar.” More videos are available here.
The Paradise Drive Matching Game, available here, challenges gamers to choose the correct poem/painting pairing from randomly arranged options.
The Broomstick Story, 2012, Object: Salvaged wooden broomstick, dowels, glue, 15.25 x 2 x 2 inches; Book: Newsprint, ink, cardboard, string, 24 x 18 x 3/16 inches
News
Untitled (Atlas Globe), 2011, Altered book from Encyclopedia Britannica Atlas, 12 x 10 inches
God, Seed: Poetry and Art about the Natural World, A collaboration with poet Rebecca Foust, 2010, 104 pages, 7.5 x 9 x .4 inches, published by Tebot Bach
Huia, 2006, Altered book, 9.25 x 6.25 x .75 inches
With drawings by Andree Singer Thompson and Henry Corning and compact disc “Homage to the Huia,” an original sound recording by composer David Hindley. Edition of 20. 9.25 x 6.25 x .75 inches
The Humor Rag, 1997, publication, 11 x 8.5 x .5 inches