A HANDFUL DRAWN FROM THE WATER
Hardground Etching with gampi chine collé, perfect bound book
15” x 15”
2023
A Handful Drawn From The Water is a research based project consisting of a suite of 5 hardground etchings. Alongside these is a perfect-bound Compendium chronicling the age of each rock, where they were found, how they were formed, and my relationship to them.
Using The Geological Society of America’s Geologic Time Scale, I created a set of rules, to link human and earthly scale. As the Scale goes back in million-year increments, the number in minutes for each Section increases exponentially.
Setting each stone directly on the plate, I continuously traced its form for the duration dictated. The older the rock, the longer the draw time, and the denser the image became. For example, the youngest rock, around 300 years old, falls into Section 1 and has a draw time of 1 minute. The oldest rock is approximately 800 million years old and falls into Section 10, with a draw time of 512 minutes.
Collected: The Thames, London, England, 2012 Formed: Cretaceous Period, 80-100 million years ago Draw Time: 8 minutes
Collected: Bodø, Norway, 2019 Formed: Proterozoic Period, 800 million years ago Draw Time: 512 minutes
Collected: Budleigh Salterton, East Devon, UK, 2019 Formed: Permian-Triassic Period, 240-280 million years ago Draw Time: 4 minutes
Collected: Mono Lake, California, USA, 2022 Formed: Quaternary Period, 300-500 years ago Draw Time: 1 minute
Collected: Land’s End, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2023 Formed: Jurassic- Early Cretaceous Period, 100-200 million years ago Draw Time: 16 minutes