









The Ground
$40.00 USD
The Ground
124 pages with 2 gatefolds, 12” x 8”
An environmental artist's book and essay about creativity, individual complicity in climate collapse, energy mining and energy sharing.
From JAB (Journal of Artists’ Books), Spring 2014
Tate Shaw’s The Ground is a hybrid publication with an essay as
artists’ book that explores literal and metaphoric notions of ground.
The book weaves together a wide ranging autobiographical narrative with
imagery of hydrofracking operations in a region of Pennsylvania where
the artist had lived. The essay is thoughtfully interspersed throughout
the images, with the text divided in such a way that the reader is never
exhausted, and that the re-emergence of the images is not an
interruption, but rather signals a shift in the story’s trajectory. The
visual consistency of the imagery anchors the text, which covers
art-making, family, friends, and the many things that take our lives
into directions we never expect. The narrator’s eventual re-energization
in Iceland’s geothermal pools neatly parallels industry’s insatiable
quest to extract energy from the ground, firmly linking both portions of
the book. The water motif also informs the images, which are scans of
inkjet printed photographs of rural Pennsylvania that have been
selectively blurred and obliterated with water. That at first glance the
images could be watercolor landscapes makes all the more powerful the
reader’s realization that they are witnessing the destruction of a
region and its way of life. The archetypal elements of ground and water
help The Ground resonate on a deep and universal level that ultimately
complements the personal, honest intimacy of the essay.
–Levi Sherman