Sharp Handmade Books

During a 2009 Artist Residency at Mammoth Cave National Park, I learned about the remarkable legacies of two early mappers of Mammoth Cave's labyrinthine passages--Stephen Bishop, an enslaved African American guide who gained international fame for his cave exploits, and Max Kaemper, a visiting German civil engineer who became captivated by the cave and, with the guide Ed Bishop, extended explorations and devised a new approach to cave mapping. These explorer-mapmakers and their maps are still celebrated at today's National Park (which boasts what is now recognized as the world's longest cave). Conveying some measure of my wonder at these remarkable legacies and this awe-inspiring place was the challenge in Depth Perception. In this complex, multisection book--which extends to 42"--I created a folded and sewn structure with pop-up features as the grounding for the text and for many of my cave-interior photographs. This book was part of the invitational exhibition The Celebration of the Book, May 27-August 4, 2011, at the McMaster Gallery, University of South Carolina, Columbia.