Wild Geese is a book of handmade papers and cyanotype images containing the poems the same name by Mary Oliver. The pages of this book were handmade at The Printing Museum, Houston with a mix of fresh cotton pulp and recycled cotton papers. The pale blue paper includes shredded paper from cyanotype test pieces that give it the color. The thickness and tactile nature of handmade papers, combined with their visual roughness, heightens the senses, especially that of physical touch.

Oliver’s poem reminds me strongly of the first time I heard the calling of wild geese. I was standing in our meadow when I heard a haunting cry, rising and falling, that sounded like an eerie honking. I could not see them geese in the sky above that first time, they were flying so high. It wasn’t until the next year that I saw them, in their textbook V formation.I now know that I can hear them twice a year as they pass over, and their calling has become a signifier for the turning of the seasons and the passing of time.

In Wild Geese I wanted to convey that initial experience of the Fall meadow and the calling geese. The photographic cyanotypes are all from this location, either contact printed directly with grasses from the site, or taken on film with minimal camera equipment to emphasize sensation over photographic fidelity. Some are 4×5 inch exposures, made in a homemade pinhole camera, and the rest are multiple exposures made on medium format film in a cheap, plastic Holga camera.