Suspect
Terrain
18 Collages on Boards
From 5 x 5 to 8 x 6 and 10 inches in diameter
2020
Photos: Don Felton, Almac Camera
Soon after moving from Chicago to Costa Mesa, California, I became obsessed with the San Andreas Fault. With a Sunset book on that topic and USGS maps as companions, I drove hundreds of miles, searching for visual proof that it existed. Along the way, I discovered Ron Redfern’s book, The Making of a Continent, and in it he used the term “suspect terrain” to refer to landscape features and materials that do not belong to their surroundings. The notion of suspect terrain is much-related to collaging, as I use fodder from different epochs, locations and media. I began to make this series of collages just prior to the onset of shelter-in-place and completed them during it. This helped me process the amorphous anxiety of those weeks stuck in my apartment, surrounded by readily available imagery and boards. A consistent element – akin to suspect terrain - is cork, pieces of which I randomly acquired while another apartment in my building was being renovated.
