Ostracod Rising

Jenner, CA: Salt Point Press, 2024. Fine. Number 6 of 26 copies signed by the book artist. This is a spectacular new artist's book from Gail Wight's Salt Point Press. She offered the following as background on her creation and thought processes for this work: "The main images, timeline clouds and globes are my original watercolors that were then scanned and then added to the page layouts before printing. The main images focus on small creatures from each time period, rather than the more familiar macro animals. For instance, a parasite symbolizes the Triassic, rather than early dinosaurs. The only visual of a mammal is the wooly mammoth tusk (truncated) in the Pleistocene. All information is factual – and fact checked by a naturalist from the CA State Park system – up through the mid Holocene. After that, the future is imaginary. However, it’s based on conversations with scientists about what they think the future might hold, and further reading on the topic. I chose 104 million years in the future as an ending date for two reasons:

1) It’s long enough for significant changes to take place, but not so long as to lose the focus of the book (our role in those changes).
2) 104 is the fever temperature at which humans start to lose their minds, so it seemed like a nice poetic number."    

Ostracod Rising tells the story of Earth’s past from 104 million years in the future. Beginning with the formation of Earth in the Hadean Eon, each page factually describes a distinct period of time throughout the ages. It then moves from our current Holocene into an imaginary yet highly plausible future consisting of the Anthropocene, Benthoscene, Silerecene, and finally the Ostracocene. Each page’s timeline covers the emergence and extinction of species, changes in atmosphere and climate, geologic and oceanic events, and the occasional asteroid collision. Large watercolor images of small creatures dominate each page, alongside other elements including day length, atmospheric content, continental drift, and the distance to our slowly receding moon.   This edition of Ostracod Rising is pigment printed on individual Hiromi asuka papers and bound with Awagami moenkopi unryu. Text is in Broadway and Cochin types. The Portfolio in which they are housed is bound in luxurious Asahi bookcloth in deep eggplant, and lined with lokta. The wrapper is heavy Hiromi asuka printed with  drawings of single-celled organisms. An inner 4-flap wrapper holds the book.

From the colophon: Ostracod Rising was originally produced as an installation for Future Tense at the Beall Center for Art + Technology, part of Getty’s 2024 Pacific Standard Time Art: Art & Science Collide. Thank you to both the Beall and Getty for support. Thank you also to Charon Vilnai and Steve Wight for editing, and to Rhiannon Alpers for problem-solving. Thank you to Allison Stegner, Elizabeth Hadley, Tony Barnosky, and Jasper Ridge at Stanford University for inspiration and for my first deep-time introduction to the extraordinary, ubiquitous, and full-of-possibilities ostracod. 

Gail Wight is a well known book artist whose work is in many public and private collections, including the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Baylor University, the British Library, California Polytechnic State University, George Mason University, Harvard University, Lafayette College, Monserrat College of Art, New York Botanical Gardens, Philadelphia Free Library, San Francisco State University, Stanford University, Tufts University, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, University of Southern California, Yale University, and numerous private collections. Her handmade books focus on the resilient yet precarious flora and fauna that live at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in the southern territories of the Pacific Northwest. They explore hybrid practices combining new mediums and technologies with the traditional craft of bookbinding. Wight works in experimental media focusing on issues of biology, the history of scientific theory and technology. She is a Professor Emerita at Stanford University, where she served as Director of Experimental Media Arts and Graduate Studies in Art Practice. This complex and fascinating work from Gail Wight is in fine condition. It measures 16 x 22 inches. Unpaginated. ARTB/031725  . (Inventory #: 37848)