Description
OREGON PILGRIMAGE IN GREEN: A FOREST JOURNAL FOR MY BROTHER
by Kim Stafford
Brother who died by your own hand, it is hard to speak of you. But I need to speak with you. A silence in the human world, in the forest I find you everywhere.
The author’s words and artist’s images together evoke the natural world and life cycles of the Oregon landscape, a landscape that holds strong memories for Stafford. Here, he spent childhood time with his brother, whose tragic death by suicide is at the heart of this “rhapsody of loss.” He now finds in this place both healing and a still-flourishing relationship with his brother.
This original work of art and literature was created through the collaboration of Stafford, Voorhies Thompson, and Sandy Tilcock, the book’s designer, printer, and binder. The trio of artists worked closely for nearly two years on the idea, from its original inspiration to the finished work, a book that is a seamless integration of verbal, visual, and physical entity.
Additional Information
| Title | Oregon Pilgrimage in Green |
| Subtitle | A Forest Journal for My Brother |
| Artist/Creator | Sandy Tilcock |
| Press Name/Publisher | lone goose press |
| Place of Publication | Eugene, OR |
| Author of Text/Poet | Kim Stafford |
| Book Structure/ Binding Method | The concertina-style book, with an etching of a maidenhair fern on its cover, cascades to reveal a continuous image and text over ten feet in length. |
| Medium/ Materials | Printed on Somerset Book paper, bound in a concertina format, with an etching of a maidenhair fern for the cover, the book cascades, revealing a continuous image and text over 10 feet in length. |
| Number of Pages | 18 pages |
| Dimensions (WxH) or (WxHxD) | 17 pages 6.5 x 12 inches |
| Publication Date | 2000 |
| Edition Size | Presented in an edition of 100 numbered and 10 lettered (participant) copies. |
| Signed and Numbered? | Yes |
Artist's Bio
Kim Stafford
Award-wining Oregon poet and author Kim Stafford is artist in residence and director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. His list of publications includes books of nonfiction, poetry, short stories, and children's fiction. He recently completed a memoir about his father, prominent Northwest poet William Stafford, entitled Father in the Best World: Living the Light and Dark with William Stafford (Gray Wolf Press).
Stafford has been described as "a neo-naturalist, one of a still small but growing group of young writers who celebrate landscape with the passion of the English romantics" (Elaine Kendall, LA Times). In Oregon Pilgrimage in Green he unravels memory with "intimate prose as rich as deepwoods loam," exploring life, loss, and healing through place, the forest.
Sandy Tilcock
Sandy Tilcock has been involved with traditional book arts for over 25 years. Her deepening interest in the craft of hand bookbinding led her to enroll at the University of Alabama’s Book Arts Institute, where she completed a Master of Fine Arts in 1987. While at Alabama, she developed a keen interest in printing and typography. She studied letterpress printing with the Institute’s director, Richard-Gabriel Rummonds.
lone goose press was founded following her return to Eugene. The name of the press derives from a passage in Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac. Leopold’s curious observation of the occasional solitary Canada goose during the Spring migration resonated with her sense of sudden isolation starting a one-person enterprise after leaving the collegial support of the Institute. In addition to her lone goose work, Sandy served for 7 years as Director of Knight Library Press at the University of Oregon.
Over her book arts career, Sandy has printed works by Barry Lopez, Kim Stafford, Pattiann Rogers, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, David James Duncan, Terry Tempest Williams, Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Bly and Sherman Alexie. Sandy states “I am an unabashed throwback. The work I do has its roots in an age of printing and publishing when books were rare and honored objects. I love the physical process of making books, the direct interaction with paper, metal type, and ink, and the rhythms of binding by hand.”
lone goose press is dedicated to excellence in the crafts of typographic design, letterpress printing and bookbinding. Over the last two decades, proprietor Sandy Tilcock’s work has been recognized for its impeccable and imaginative craftsmanship and design. The subtlety and refinement of her work keeps it understated, in keeping with her philosophy, “Do good work and allow the work to speak for itself.”
The press’s mission is to promote book arts, to celebrate outstanding writing, and to foster conversation about community, social justice, and environmental ethics. lone goose press produces limited-edition books and broadsides whose content is contemporary: writings of living authors with original graphics by working studio artists. The means is traditional: letterpress printing using lead type and a hand-cranked cylinder proofing press. Employing these “hands-on” technologies at the press is not intended to replicate historical printing methods, but to honor and value the book/broadside as an artistic object as well as a vessel for ideas. Sandy is committed to working in a spirit of collaboration with clients, authors, and artists. She sees her role as creating unity among text, image and binding structure.
Margot Voorhies Thompson
In her work Portland, Oregon, artist Margot Voorhies Thompson often uses natural motifs; her engravings for Oregon Pilgrimage in Green portray the birth, life, and death of a forest as a metaphor for continuation and for what happened to the author's brother. Voorhies Thompson has received numerous awards and commissions; she is represented by the Laura Russo Gallery in Portland, and her work is held in many private and corporate collections. She is a Board Member of the Northwest Print Council and has been a frequent instructor at Oregon College of Art and Craft and at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work encompasses calligraphy, collage, and large-scale painting as well as printmaking.
