“I wish to speak a word for the art of poking around,” begins philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore in a fine art book beautifully built around her essay by lone goose press.
I wish to speak a word for the artistry of Poking Around, the limited edition letterpress collaboration by lone goose proprietor Sandy Tilcock and artist Margot Voorhies Thompson. Poking around is exactly what they did for 10 days at the PLAYA residency for writers, artists and scientists in Summer Lake, Oregon. PLAYA’s high desert landscape is very much the fourth collaborator in the project.
I arrived the same April night as Tilcock and Thompson and spotted them at sunrise combing the shore of the playa, an alkaline lake surrounded by desert, mountains and forests. What they found poking around often found its way into their pages in inventive ways. Thompson scooped up coarse dirt while hiking on the hillside the second day to study the complexities of colors underneath her feet and to add to her array of stains. Tule reeds, which Native Americans used for many things including weaving, doubled as something to draw and something to draw with. A bit of barbed wire for the final page marks the human hand on the landscape.
Moore’s essay is from her 1996 book Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water. While her focus is paying attention in the natural world, Moore acknowledges that the art of poking around “can be practiced in libraries and antique stores and peoples’ psyches.”
At our first communal dinner that week at PLAYA, three book artists, two stream biologists, a sculptor, a photographer and several writers discussed how crucial poking around – inside and outside of our heads – is to all art and to science. We agreed our best work is seldom what we set out to do but what we discover.
PLAYA’s setting is steeped in surprise. During his 1843 mapping expedition, Captain John C. Frémont stood in several feet of snow on what he named Winter Ridge and looked down the snow-free playa he named Summer Lake. Because he had already seen the Great Salt Lake in Utah, Frémont correctly surmised there was a vast stretch of land in the West where water does not flow to an ocean that he called the Great Basin.
One of my favorite pages of Poking Around is inspired by the cracks in the crust of the alkaline lake. Because PLAYA attracts residents who speak science as well as art, I now understand that the polygonal patterning is tensegrity, a structural term coined by Buckminster Fuller and an efficient way in nature or in building to control compression.
In the video, Tilcock and Thompson explain the design evolution possible working together at PLAYA. They have collaborated several times before but never in the same space and time. Tilcock’s workshop, with its 1940 Vandercook 219 proof press, is in Eugene. Thompson lives 120 miles away in Portland. Only a few steps separated their PLAYA studios, so it was exhilarating for them to bounce back and forth as they blended art and type (Gill Sans for the text and Castellar for display). As Tilcock notes, Thompson’s drawing of the cracks “almost tickles the type.”
The book will debut Thursday, Oct. 22 [2016] with a reading by Moore hosted by PLAYA and Laura Russo Gallery 805 NW 21St Ave. in Portland. RSVP to DeborahFord@playasummerlake.org for the 6-9 p.m. event.The original drawings and book will also be on display Oct. 20-Dec. 30 at the John Wilson Special Collections at Multnomah County Library at 801 SW 10th Ave. Portland. Poking Around will be available at lonegoosepress.com beginning Nov. 1.
Catherine Woodard helped return Poetry in Motion to NYC’s subways and is on the board of the Poetry Society of America. Her poems have appeared in CNN online, Painted Bride Quarterly, RHINO and other publications. She is a former journalist who lives and plays basketball in NYC.
from the archive; first posted October 17, 2016
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Author: The Best American Poetry
