Restless Dust is a multimedia work housed in a two-tiered wooden box. The top portion holds a four-color letterpress leather-bound artist’s book separated by Plexiglas from a velvet-lined chamber containing two illuminated paper birds (activated when the box lid is opened). The text invites Charles Darwin’s ghost to sail to present day San Francisco and wander with me through the greater Bay Area. The focus of the journey is three-fold: to celebrate Northern California’s unique species; to examine Darwin’s legacy and its impact on the Bay Area; and to acknowledge the fragile and endangered state of local flora and fauna, beleaguered by environmental degradation during Darwin’s time and my own. The book was created while in residence with the Imprint at the San Francisco Center for the Book.
The stories of each place that we visit are organized loosely around the mnemonic VISTA for studying evolution: Variety, Inheritance, Selection, Time, and Adaptation. We visit with Ishi, examine a crime database filled with DNA, and relax at a dispensary. Venus fly traps, gooseneck mussels, tule elk, redwoods, mountain lions, and the albino alligotor of San Francisco’s Academy of Science accompany our journey. We set invasive mitten crabs afloat on miniature floating funeral pyres, bemoan the buffalo in Golden Gate Park, and Darwin sheds tears over the loss of his daughter. We agree to meet again in another one hundred years, all in all a good day.
The title is a remix of a quote from Mary Wollstonecraft: “It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organized dust.”
Also shown here is the trade edition of Restless Dust, a series of four-color letterpress tear-off postcards, along with a set of stamps commemorating our day.