This project grew from a session of visual/writing group The Earth Of, called Murmurations, which met over a series of weeks in early 2023. In describing the area of focus for this session, Andrew Helton wrote:

To speak in a murmur, the murmuring of waves, a mumbled or private expression of discontent, implies a thing both indistinct and continuous not unlike the movement of lips without articulation. It is a sound that awakens, coos softly as if calling a flock of starlings into motion—a few hundred birds moving as one suspended reality. How each starling in a flock is connected to every other bird. How physiological mechanisms happen simultaneously in two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds. It is not purely for defense. It is a striving for distance between the edge and the predator. An impulse to confront the perimeter. Not only a way to disguise, but also to inflict, to articulate, to confront, to expose a boundary.

The workshop was conceived and directed by Andrew Helton and Ginger Teppner; anthology edited and designed by Christine Lorenz (that’s me). All three contributed writing and visual projects to the collection, along with authors Evan Burgess, Dewen Ju, Monica Lacey, Carol McGorry, Dhooleka Raj, and Becky Vartabedian. Afterword by Arts Letters & Numbers executive director David Gersten. 236 pages, color, printed by Lulu Editions. Purchases of the book (whether from here or from Lulu) will help support future programming from Arts Letters & Numbers, which made The Earth Of possible.

Copies purchased here are bundled with prints from either or both of two projects I contributed.

The riso prints are an extension of the series Halophilic 4: By the Spell of the Invention. The prints were designed in collaboration with Evan Burgess, who printed them at the School of Visual Arts. There are two prints in the set, each of them two-sided, printed in black, green, and fluorescent pink.

You can also purchase with a print from the (Salt) Evasion Formations series. There are eight of these images in the book, and I’ve broken each of those into fragments: six to eight of them per large image, for a total of 52 small images. Each of the small images is in an edition of one, printed on Awagami paper. Image size is 5”x7” on 6”x9” paper, with the image title printed as a caption. Each is signed in pencil. They are only available in this form as a bundle with the book.

In keeping with the themes of the book, the specific image you receive will be a surprise. At this time, I am shipping fragments from Evasion Pattern: Flash Expansion, seen in the page spread above.

Your order will ship via USPS for $5 in the US. For international orders, please email me for shipping cost (lorenzc@comcast.net).