Title Hit the Road!
Subtitle Highway 99 Roadside Art•ifacts, Volume 1
Artist / Creator Laura Russell
Press Name Simply Books, Ltd.
Artist's Nationality American (b. Saginaw, Michigan)
Place of Publication Portland, OR
Publication Date 2008
Subject Roadside Attractions, Highways
Process / Technique Digital ink jet printing.
Number of Images 18
Image Process Photography
Structure / Binding Single layer horizontal flag book with cloth bound cover and ribbon tie to display open. Includes an insert card with a map listing each attraction.
Paper Stock Red River Polar Matte paper
Number of Pages 18
Dimensions (WxHxD) 9 x 5.75 x 1 inches
Edition Size Edition of 25
Box / Wrapper Presented in a clamshell box.
Signed & Numbered Yes

Hit the Road! by Laura Russell

$375.00
Highway 99 runs all the way from Canada to Mexico. In its heyday, Highway 99 was the main corridor through Washington, Oregon and California. Replaced by Interstate 5 in the mid-1960’s, Highway 99 still beckons with neon signs, shaped buildings, gentle giants and other roadside attractions that take us back to simpler times and happy road trips. Hit the Road! is volume one in a series featuring each of the three states. The artist spent close to three years traveling Highway 99 to photograph and catalog Washington’s roadside attractions. Outside of Seattle and Tacoma, Washington has only a handful of remaining art•ifacts, but the ones that still stand are worth preserving. The 18 attractions featured in Hit the Road! are displayed in loosely interpreted geographically correct order from North to South.

Artist Bio

Laura Russell is a photographer and book artist who creates hand-bound, limited-edition artist books that incorporate photographs of our urban landscape and tell a story about our culture and our communities. She has participated in national and international book arts and fine art exhibitions. Her books are collected by individual collectors and are in major collections at museums, libraries, universities and corporations. Laura is also the founder of 23 Sandy Gallery, a fine art gallery in Portland, 2007-2020, which is now owned and operated by Erin Mickelson.

Artist Statement

My goal as an artist is to open our minds to the visual and graphic landscape we look at every day but never really see. If we pay attention, we find that our urban landscape has a story to tell about our culture and our communities. For many years I have photographed vintage neon signs, brick wall ghost signs, graffiti and other examples of language and graphics in our environment. Recently, I have since expanded my photography to our urban social landscape. I use these photographs to create limited edition, hand-bound artist books that are at once a celebration of the vernacular and my own small effort to preserve our social, cultural and commercial landscape.