My MCBA mentorship is nearly over after a year-long series of workshops and mentoring on the book arts. Myself and the five other recipients have covered everything from what constitutes an artist book, various forms of bindings, multi-signature binding, silkscreen, lead typesetting, polymer plates for letterpress, letterpress printing, paper making, box construction and relief printing. It’s been a long, hard but utterly enjoyable ride and I’ll be sad to see it end. But it won’t of course, because the book arts is something that will stay with me. But I will miss the camaraderie of the other five recipients, Amanda, Caroline, Meryl, Rachel and Ben, although I’m sure I’ll be seeing many of them around MCBA in the future – I hope so.

Our show opens on November 4th at the MCBA gallery in Minneapolis, and as well as the finished book, I’ll have the images framed and on the wall.

DARK MATTER is published as part of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts/Jerome Foundation Mentorship Program Series III.

Deep inside an idle iron mine, below the ancient hematite rock formations of northern Minnesota, a tiny elevator rattles to a halt on Level 27. Here among dozing bats and artificial lights, people wait. And wait. This is the unlikely site of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) lab, where scientists are looking for the tiny burst that will indicate evidence of dark matter, a product of the big bang believed to comprise 25% of the material in the universe. Observations of visible structures in space suggest that their own gravitational forces are not strong enough to account for their formation, suggesting some kind of missing mass is responsible. This missing mass is believed to be dark matter, so called because it does not emit or scatter light like ordinary matter.

DARK MATTER is a conceptual investigation of the visual phenomenon of shadows inside the CDMS II lab and in the forest around the site. Since scientists don’t know what it is exactly, or if it even exists, these photographs imagine what this mysterious substance might look like if it were visible.

• Twenty unbound but sequenced hand-pulled polymer photogravures.
• Printed on Rives BFK with letterpress printed text pages set in Proxima Nova.
• Title page, statement, colophon and plate index.
• Single tray case in black Canapetta book cloth with hand made Cave paper.
• Designed and produced entirely by the artist.
• 14″ w x 15.5″ h.
• Edition of 10 plus artist proofs.