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SHE IS RESTLESS: The Artist Books of Rebecca Mir Grady

August 20, 2016 · Print This Article

Sometimes it seems impossible to fully conceive environmental space, and the many time scales that extend far beyond that of a single human life. What does it mean to imagine the ever expanding rate of extinction, full absences defined by “critters” I never knew existed, much less imagined. At such times, I simultaneously bump into a limit to my own imagination and the certainty that those limits must break open. With that in mind, I wanted to tie in an ongoing publication project by Rebecca Mir Grady, an artist, bookmaker, and jeweler based out of Chicago. She has been working on her publication series, SHE IS RESTLESS for about five years. The series is deceptively modest; each palm-sized publication is handmade, each dedicated to one subject: spill, drought, lost at sea, polar vortex, each ecologically minded. Upon opening one book, a single page folds out, expanding outside the bounds of its cover into a flat, single graphic. The humility of the endeavor, the shifting and interactive experience of scale, and the delicate line drawings each publication contains collude to offer a path towards making-thinking-learning through environmental crisis. You can read a previous interview I conducted with Mir here.

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Caroline Picard: What made you start to produce this series of publications? Did you always imagine that they would be ecologically-minded?
Rebecca Mir Grady: My work is always revolving around nature in one way or another, and our interactions with it—so when I was first planning the series in 2011 to show at Chicago Zine Fest, I only had a vague idea of making something that referenced global warming. (I’d been making a lot of drawings of melting Arctic ice at the time). I was reading Susan Casey’s book The Wave, about giant waves and tsunamis, and their increasing occurrence, when the T?hoku earthquake shook Japan; then came the tsunami, and then the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. It was difficult to think about anything else besides those events. So, the first two editions “fracture” and “waves” reference the earthquake and tsunami, respectively.
CP: What happens when you transform such large events into these palm-sized books?  So often conversations around the environment are huge, covering massive time scales, and physical scales, and scales of devastation. One of the things that I love about your series is that it feels exquisitely humble, and even like a good reminder of one’s place within massive events. 
RMG: I’ve always loved books, all kinds, and artist books and zines. So I think of the SHE IS RESTLESS series as a little bridge between some of the artist books I’ve made in the past and the more zine-like mini comics. One of the great things about zines is that they can be made quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. I self-publish them, so I was able to produce two quick volumes in a short amount of time in direct response to what was happening around the world. But the biggest drawback (for me) with zines is the lack of a spine—I collect zines all of the time, but they quickly disappear into a pile of zines and mini comics on my bookshelf. When I was in Italy, I bought a map of Venice that had a cardstock cover with a spine, which I thought was genius! A perfect format to merge the artist book and zine formats. Initially I planned to make some larger ones, but after considering the possibility, it seemed out of place for this project.
CP: Why?
RMG: The scale of devastation from the earthquake and tsunami was so huge. Looking at pictures and hearing coverage on the radio, it was still so hard to comprehend. I’d also been thinking a lot about scale while reading Casey’s book: How do you describe a hundred foot wave? What about a thousand foot wave? By translating those environmental catastrophes into a book—and a tiny book at that—the scale is exaggerated. Because the book is small, a reader has to get closer to it, to really peer into the subject matter. When people pick up the “waves” book, I say, “That is a really big wave.”  They open the book, and—by unfolding the map-like page—the wave tumbles out (this one was accordion folded), and seems to go on forever. Then it folds back up, fits in your pocket, and you can take it with you.
CP: How did the “Underwater Cities” publication occur to you? 
RMG: I’ve continued to make one or two editions each year in response to different global warming / climate events / natural disasters that have happened in the year. In that way, I imagine the “SHE” in “SHE IS RESTLESS” as the Earth. The Earth is restless. “Underwater Cities” was made after Hurricane Sandy swept through New York and New Jersey. I saw an image of a boardwalk rollercoaster underwater, and it reminded me of a kid’s sandcastle getting washed away by a wave. Humanity has built so much right on the water; I’m sure that sort of sandcastle effect is going to keep happening with more and more frequency.
CP: Is that the only edition with a distinctly human architecture?
RMG: The “Lost At Sea” edition also directly links to our human presence through its absence. We’re all so connected now, with GPS tracking and whatever else, that it seems impossible to disappear. That made it all the more shocking when Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went missing.
CP:  Connecting to that idea of absence, I also somehow love that for “Wildfire,” the trees define the negative space, and the rest of the skyline is consumed in red. What made you make that decision? 
RMG: I made a lot of drawings before I got to the final one for “Wildfire.” This one is definitely one of my favorites—I love the negative space. Visually, it made for a much stronger image than drawing the trees themselves burning, and conceptually it also worked—as some of the trees would be completely consumed by the fire.

View more of Rebecca Mir Grady’s SHE IS RESTLESS publications here.



Thoughts from Across the Cultural Divide: #19 (Hurricane Sandy)

November 13, 2012 · Print This Article

 

Hurricane Sandy

I left New York City for Wisconsin just as hurricane Sandy was barreling up the East Coast, and I returned in the middle of the nor’easter that came to salt the wounds that hadn’t yet healed.

That means I was in Wisconsin to observe the aftermath of both the election and the hurricane. It was the first election I spent outside of New York in over a decade, and, despite being in a place that rallied behind a lesbian senator and prides itself on its artisanal cheeses and beers, the sense that I wasn’t in Brooklyn was palpable.

Romney/Ryan signs dotted most of the manicured lawns of the bedroom communities in Ozaukee County, one of the most republican enclaves in the state, indeed the country. Cedarburg, where I stay with my in-laws sits smack in the center of the county, and happens to be the place where John McCain and Sarah Palin chose to launch their 2008 presidential campaign, which didn’t even think about coming close enough to Brooklyn to see its forearm tattoos.

McCain/Palin campaign kick-off in Cedarburg, Wisconsin

When ensconced inside Cedarburg’s city limits one begins to understand why its citizens gripe about the federal government. Look around and you’ll see a community that seems from every vantage to have figured things out. Not in some kind of sinister, Ayn Randian, elitist disengagement either, but in a real, communitarian, bucket brigade, do unto others way. A way that leads many of those who don’t leave the place to wonder why a bunch of bureaucrats 1000 miles away should be shaking them down for money to pay for social and cultural programs that they manage just fine on a community level.

In Cedarburg, if you needed food, you could walk up to any restaurant and they’d give you a meal. That’s welfare. If you were sick, the doctor would see you. That’s medical care. If you were pregnant and 16, the community would politely shame you and gossip about you for the rest of your life, but would also see to it that your child was cared for. That’s social services. That’s also the police.

My dad-in-law – who happens to be named Sandy – is one of a majority in his community who if allowed would shrink the entire federal government into a 24-hour help desk whose phone number was buried so deep on the website that you’d have no choice but to use the on-line chat to reach them. But as he watched New Jersey and New York plunge into darkness and not immediately light back up, I watched his conviction waver. And as he watched his beloved Chris Christie lay olive branches in front of Barack Obama, I thought I saw a little pan-American Esprit de corps bubble up from inside and pierce his usually impenetrable exterior.

Seeing Christie and Obama together, he muttered, “This must be a dire situation because it’s not easy for someone that big to kiss an ass.”

Chris Christie and Barack Obama

We stayed up late talking about Jacksonian versus Hamiltonian democracy as the disaster unfolded over cable news. We didn’t agree on everything, but it was wholly amicable. I gave him a copy of Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine” which he didn’t immediately throw into the fire or back at me, a gesture as tender as a hug if you knew the man.

He liked it when I riffed about how the media’s job is to locate scapegoats where they can and to create them when they can’t. I did a shtick about natural disasters in Chris Rock’s voice and then played him Rock’s bit about why people blame music and video games when kids go on shooting rampages at public schools.

“What ever happened to CRAZY!!??”

“What ever happened to BIG, POWERFUL, IMPLACABLE, UNAVOIDABLE, NATURAL FUCKING DISASTER!!!?”

Chris Rock, “Just Plain Crazy”

He roared like a kid telling dirty jokes on the playground. He said all journalists were like hyenas but with less loyalty, and then told me an old one about a blind stewardess and a couple of donkeys for good measure.

Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to galvanize people.

The day after the election, I caught Sandy out in the front yard taking down the Romney/Ryan and Tommy Thompson signs. He like the rest of the town was emotionally hungover from the political orgy of the past few nights. In fact, earlier in the day I actually saw a guy crying at the gas station about the election. It could have been for other reasons, but I assumed he was pissed about either Romney or Paul or Tommy. After gathering and tossing the campaign signs in the trash we went inside where the 24 hour news droned on. It was Fox News and the subject was the fiscal cliff and the end of the Bush tax cuts.

Sandy  yelled over one the pundits, “BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!!”

“Of the host’s hair?” I added sarcastically.

“Of the SOCIALISTS!!”

“You mean of our democratically elected federal government whose taxes are roughly a quarter of its gross domestic product?”

“A quarter given is a quarter wasted and redistributed!! Protect my shores, deliver my mail, and get the hell out of my life!! And don’t let the door hit you on the way out!!”

Hurricane Sandy was back and no bucket brigade could stop it.