ARTIST: Gail Wight
IMPRINT COORDINATOR: Rhiannon Alpers
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Restless Dust (2009)
Edition of 40; 36 pages. Additional multimedia installation inside wooden housing.
Letterpress printed pages; screenprinted box; paper mache sculptures
Dimensions: 6 3/8 in. x 8 3/8 in. {book}; 7 7/8 in. x 9 7/8 in. x 3 3/8 in. {box}
Link-stitch bound soft leather book
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Artist/author Gail Wight created Restless Dust as a multimedia installation housed in a two-tiered wooden box. The top portion holds a three-color, letterpress-printed, leather-bound artist's book. Plexiglas separates a velvet-lined bottom chamber containing two illuminated paper birds (activated when the box lid is removed). The custom-made cigar-style box was stained and silkscreened for the final piece. Wight's text invites Charles Darwin's ghost to sail to present-day San Francisco and wander through the diverse Bay Area terrain with the artist. The journey's focus is threefold: to celebrate Northern California's unique species, examine Darwin's legacy and impact in the Bay Area, and acknowledge the fragile and endangered state of local flora and fauna caused by environmental degradation. The artist carved and printed the book's images from linoleum blocks and hand-set the body text entirely in metal type.


In Wight's own words: "In attempts to understand life, I have made maps of various nervous systems, practiced art while under hypnosis, conducted biochemical experiments on myself and willing others, executed medical illustrations in black velvet, documented dissections of humans, dissected machines and failed to put most of them back together, made drawings with bones, and have attempted to create models of my own confused state. My artwork investigates issues in biology and the history of science and technology. It explores the cultural impact of scientific practice and our ongoing redefinition of self through epistemological constructions. I try to follow the ways in which these ideologies, both metaphysical and manifest, travel through time, moving from the scientific to the social sphere, the social to the scientific, and so often become the overlooked of the everyday."