Monthly Statement:
December 2005
This month was fruitful. I acquired dust from three places under various circumstances.

After I was notified, I subversively gathered dust from the Natural Living Department of a Wild Oats grocery store in Tucson. An acquaintance working at the store alerted me of a cash crop of dust found as she prepared to garnish the top of shelving for the holiday season. I was able to climb the ladder myself and gather a small sample of the fine dust that condensed very easily in my palm. I did notice a smattering of long dead bees among the dust – a detail I have yet to make sense of. This is by far the healthiest dust I have come across.

The second location from which I subversively gathered dust was at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. This clump consists of dust from both Terminals A and B. I found a very small amount in Terminal A near an escalator up to the airport inter-terminal train. I didn’t have time to photograph that site properly as the train we needed to take to Terminal B was arriving. In Terminal B at the bottom of an escalator I spied a row of classic airport seating and knew from past experiences that beneath such furniture the odds of finding dust was very good. The color of the floor made it somewhat difficult to differentiate between tile and dust. I added a good amount to the Terminal A dust already in my pocket. As I turned away from photographing the site I met the very skeptical look of a soldier in desert fatigues and thought for half a second that he might take me down in an effort to thwart some sort of terrorism I was surely planning by photographing chairs. This dust could literally be from anywhere as the DFW Airport is an international airport, but it’s more likely that it has all the ingredients of true cattle country. Traces of gunpowder, flecks of rawhide, a shard of a stirrup, bits of straw and a faint of odor of diesel fuel.

The third batch of dust I acquired was a gift. While visiting friends in little Oxford, Iowa I was presented with a very white-appearing clump of dust. It blended in with the gray floor very nicely. I was touched with the thoughtfulness and quickly realized it’s white appearance had nothing to do with Santa Claus or the four inches of snow outside, but was the result of their white dog. These compassionate friends take in stray animals when necessary and the white dog is the largest of the four or five cats and two dogs that inhabit their home. It is a large, very linear looking clump and somewhat coarse. Both sad and comforting, this dust is made up of lost pets, another family’s heartache and the kindness of people who cared to take them in.

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