Monthly Statement:
April 2006
I fell behind my self-imposed dust bunny quota for this month. I only obtained dust from one location, but it was a pretty big location. I gathered dust form various tourist-oriented buildings along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon one of the seven wonders of the world! 
They keep it pretty tidy at the South Rim. I had quite a bit of trouble finding any dust it was a terribly windy couple of days during my visit and I think this weather condition paired with the steady flow of people coming to look and buy kept all miniscule debris floating around. I've never pretended to shop so low to the ground in trinket shops before nor have I ever intentionally picked up a tiny piece of food that really looked like a dust clump from the carpeted floor of hotel bar. After much searching with bent knees and fondling of items such as rawhide wallets, refrigerator magnets, pieces of turquoise, ceramic wind chimes, various whittled wooden objects, over-sized t-shirts and a book cataloguing all the deaths in Grand Canyon I was able to piece together a hard earned dust bunny. I managed to pick up a piece of red string as well which provides some nice contrast to the ever-drab dust. This dust is as much about tourism and local commerce as it is about people driving for hours just to look at something and be photographed next to it. I'd love to say that there is evidence of millennia upon millennia of erosion in the dust and that part of it could actually be millions of years old, but I know better. It is my souvenir and although it is not whittled and it is not magnetized, I think it is better. It is an artifact of the desire for the souvenir and a trace of the need to compliment all the pictures that were taken earlier in the day. A little memento to enhance my story about your vacation. 

Process: I plan to acquire dust in two ways. Initially, I will ask for permission to sweep a chosen site and document the process. If permission is not granted or if I find myself in a place that seems to be an interesting opportunity for gathering dust, I will then obtain my accumulate in a covert fashion. This means I will inconspicuously search for dust clumps on the spot and document the site, rather than the process.

I will be gathering dust from two different places a month as my contribution to the Accumulation Project. From each bag of dust I obtain I’ll manipulate the dust bunny into different shapes and make a series of photograms on cyanotype paper. As the dust bunny assumes this new pictorial form, it takes of the appearance of a cloud in a deep blue sky and subtly forms a connection between a nuisance remainder of human existence and the ephemeral behavior of the weather overhead. Each series of “clouds” will be placed into a book that I’ve assembled specifically for that place.

Contact: sekondsight@yahoo.com