Reading the Landscape (Ancient Ocean Testaments, Kanseas)
&
2019 Ghost of the Everchanging (after John Charlton)
Some 100-million years ago Kansas, like much of the American Midwest, was at the bottom of an ocean called the Niobrarian Sea. The distinctive chalk geology of Kansas today is the remnant of that ancient marine world.
Castle Rock and Cobra Rock are two iconic features of the state that are changing before our eyes -through the wear and tear of erosion and unregulated tourism.
Kansas Geological Survey photographer John Charlton photographed these formations over time, helping document their dramatic changes. The inkjet prints Ghosts of the Everchanging are digital "double exposures" of Charlton's photographs.
The accompanying sculptures, Reading the Landscape (Ancient Ocean Testament, Kanseas) are built from books discarded from the University of Kansas and Lawrence Pubic Libraries, layers of accumulated knowledge and records through time. If geology is the Book of Nature read through everchanging shape, such formations are both testaments and documents.
Go to the companion works in Theory of the Earth Volume IV :
- Deep Time Library & Archive
- Text and Texture, Books of Nature
- Worlds We Might Live On
- Earth, 1934 (definition, Dust Bowl)
- Our Planet-Sized Fact (average global temperature change, 1895–2018, after Ed Hawkins)