Deep in the mountains of Aspen, Colorado, the fabled marshmallow box fields are said to grow in lush, beautiful valleys — accessible only through terrain so rough it can be crossed on foot alone. There, fields of gorgeous, blooming marshmallow box plants grow wild and numerous, like poppies after a spring rain. The air turns sweet with the smell of marshmallows ripening in the warm autumn sun until they push off their own tops, exposing the marshmallow inside like a beautiful, ripe fruit — luscious and full, swollen with Rocky Mountain water and sweetened by the sun.
These prints come from that same mythology. Made during a residency at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, this edition of 147 pulls its imagery from the carved image of the marshmallow box garden on top of the Marshmallow Box Bench — vacuum-embossed and hand-rubbed with ink onto handmade paper, the same process later used for the Cloud Cathedral Prints. Where the bench carries that carved image as furniture, these prints turn it into a flat, framed record of the same fictional field.
Each sheet was pulled by hand, one at a time, so no two in the run of 147 are identical: the pressure of the rub, the grain of the bench's print block, and the register of the ink all shift slightly from print to print. Taken together with the bench, the garden installations, and the box itself, the prints are the project's flattest and most graphic form — the idea reduced to line and shadow on paper.