Missives, 2024

Photopolymer intaglio, letterpress polymer, lead type, and pressure printing on Arches lightweight

14 x 11 x 1 in.

How do our digital messages travel through the landscape? I am thinking about unseen and unnoticed infrastructure and trying to imagine how digital messages move around through wires and electromagnetic waves. I have been fascinated by all of the cell towers that are disguised as trees. The faux trees are witnesses to our movements and relationships as collected data. The cell towers on a hill in Paradise Valley, California, were photographed with my iphone, and made into a photopolymer intaglio plate. Split-fountain pressure-printed map and circuit board suggests a landscape with internal structures. Letterpress photopolymer screenshots and lead type describe activities translated into data. This is an artist's proof from the edition created for The Art of Translation portfolio published by The CODEX Foundation in Berkeley, CA.

About the artist:

Mary V. Marsh's work explores the changing technologies of communication through a lens of personal experience and anxiety. Projects look at how information is delivered, perceived and the intersection of experience and memory. Mary V. Marsh has exhibited throughout the Bay Area with solo shows at San Jose Museum of Art, San Francisco Arts Commission Grove Street, Berkeley Art Center, San Francisco Public Library Skylight Gallery, Kala Art Institute, and Mercury 20. She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1992, a Fellowship Award from Kala Art Institute in 2018, and was a 2022 Small Plates artist at the San Francisco Center for the Book.