To round out this three-part blog series begun in June (see PART 1 and Part 2), I offer a brief presentation of a lengthy artist book project that was also the capstone of my Masters of Liberal Arts degree program at SUNY Empire University, completed earlier this year: A Generous Land: Gifts from Cranberry Lake Preserve, which took the form of an 88-page coptic bound book, illustrated map, and collection of found natural items wrapped in hand-dyed cloth, all contained in a wooden diorama box.
The project’s conception itself was a revelatory gift, as the creative freedom afforded me by this interdisciplinary program posed a challenge from the start: how do I choose a topic focus when everything around me is interesting? A day came when I was particularly exasperated by my lingering analysis paralysis, so I went for a walk around Cranberry Lake, a 5-minute drive from my home, to clear my head. I would go there often for a mindful reset, to sketch, write, or just walk. And it was while walking and breathing in the loamy smell of the moist earth that my epiphany struck: It’s all here. Everything I needed was right there at my feet, the diversity of details which could speak to the larger issues that mattered to me. One of my many favorite sentences from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass had come to pass: “The land knows you, even when you are lost.” [1]
My individualized course work helped me gather the material and experience I would need, including a practicum component of a land-based pedagogy course which involved designing an eco-art workshop for the summer camp at the preserve. I was glad to work with the simple liveliness of children in what was a complex time of loss, having recently witnessed my mother endure the ravages of cancer in her final weeks of life, shortly followed by seeing how Beech Leaf Disease was killing my favorite trees at the preserve. But as I write in the book: “memories are like microbes. They consume the blood, sweat, and tears shed during the exquisitely profound experience of accompanying a loved one on their last, corporeal journey. A rich, regenerative compost emerges, fertilizer for the soil of a growing soul.”
A few months after my mother passed away, my partner and I began a new life chapter in Ithaca, NY, after so many of them ‘downstate’ in White Plains. It turned out this book would also be a work of closure, a long farewell to the physical closeness of a beloved place and its creatures, trees, and gneiss rocks. Despite, or perhaps because of this, the meaning of the writing and research deepened. In the larger picture of ecological collapse, the work seemed to take on the feel of a eulogy infused with gratitude for the land as it lived and breathed—a microcosm of our imperiled biosphere as a whole. If work is not grounded in gratitude, it can too easily become a chore to ignore. We need the beauty of unvarnished eulogies for our still-living world.
In her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit elaborates on the idea that narrative writing is closely linked to walking, and that “to write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as guide” [2]. In the same spirit, I crafted an ecocentric lyric essay divided into ten segments, each centering on a different section of trail while exploring a particular topic such as sound pollution, disease and death, geology, clean water, graffiti, invasive species, land ownership, and the fragility or resilience of ecosystems including humans. Woven throughout the text are my photographs, sketches, poetry, and maps. Also featured are QR code links to audio clips of a singing Wood Thrush and roaring airplane, a mini slide show of one vista through all the seasons, and a video of a migrating salamander missing part of its tail. The book is an invitation to walk and reflect with me, to map stories onto the preserve’s pathways, and to consider multiple points of perception in a multi-species world. A serendipitous result is that it takes about the same time to read the book as it does to leisurely walk the actual looping path I write about.
The unique display edition of the book was printed using an Epson P700 printer, the pages trimmed and assembled by hand. The cover boards were wrapped with printed watercolor paper and protected with a coating of acrylic matte medium. The kozo end papers were embellished with a hand-carved rubber stamp of a beech leaf I made for the camp workshop. On the front, the title page peeks through a hexagon-shaped portal framed by a ghosted version of my illustrated map of the preserve.
The hexagon, an icon of interconnectedness and a shape which occurs frequently in nature, is further honored by my map design which is divided into ten pairs of hexagons, each corresponding to a chapter of the book, to either be explored in order while reading or pieced together like a puzzle to contemplate as a whole. With its liberties of perspective and scale, the drawing depicts fairly accurate positioning of trails, roads, and landmarks in the preserve. Real property lines are omitted intentionally to emphasize the interconnectivity and character of the land itself.
The wooden container box has double doors reminiscent of a devotional ‘nicho’ or diorama that when opened reveal a photographic panorama. There is also room in the box for a small assortment of pine cones and gneiss rock specimens from the Quarry area of the preserve, collected with permission and stored in the hand-dyed indigo cotton ‘ground cloth,’ its watery pattern an echo of the surface of the lake.
A paperback version of the book featuring sections of the illustrated map as chapter title spreads is forthcoming, which will make a larger edition and wider distribution possible. The ultimate aim of this project, after all, is to inspire readers to engage intimately with their own places, to deepen their curiosity about ecological entanglements and relationships, and to revere with humility the generosity of all living lands.
Notes:
1. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. First Edition. Milkweed Editions, 2013.
2. Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Penguin Books, 2001.
Karen Viola is a book artist and writer in Ithaca, NY. Her work is grounded in research and a sense of kinship with the land. She has an MA in Liberal Studies focused on creative ecoliteracy, a BFA in illustration, and a professional background in designing innovative books for children.
