Archive Mode. Call 2024 All the Fixins: Artists from the South (Juried) ended on 5/10/24, 11:59 PM. Call settings are read only. See Current Open Calls
This artist book depicts the forest at dusk using offset lithography to reproduce a photograph of a misty woodland edge and the flora leading up to it with an additional graphic image of trees and text screenprinted on top. Each printed sheet was folded and cut in such a way that, when the book is displayed how it was intended to be viewed, it takes the form of a modified accordion structure. A portion of the sculptural book stands while the rest of it lies on the surface it is displayed on, resulting in a small-scale environment that the viewer/reader can walk around.
The text in this book was excerpted from an online hunting forum that posed the question “Do you ever get afraid in the woods?” and is positioned low on the pages, causing the viewer/reader to crouch down to read as if they are looking for something in the thicket. The process of reading discussions on these online hunting forums allows me to enter a liminal, virtual space from which I emerge along with the other men who inhabit them—with whom I sympathize—as an aggregate, ambiguous identity. As a result, the authors of the mediated text in the work and the source of the text are indiscernible. Ultimately, it was not my intention to single these individuals out by revealing their identities, but rather to commemorate the courage it took to share their anecdotes with an online community that is undoubtedly trolled by judgmental men.
